April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

abortion

Charges dropped against Kopp

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I was surprised to read in yesterdays spectator that charges against the radical anti-abortion extremist James Charles Kopp had been dropped. I wondered at the time if it had to do with the fact that he is currently serving a life sentence in the States. Today’s article would seem to indicate that that is the case.

The announcement said Kopp remains a “person of interest” and the “investigations remain open.” That technically leaves the door open to future work on the cases, although Kopp — the only person ever identified as a suspect — is locked away for good, and U.S. officials say he will never be released.

Task force spokesperson Sergeant John Burchill with Winnipeg police said that with the announcement, the task force no longer exists other than in name, but would receive any new information.

He said the main reason for the timing of dropping the charges is that all of Kopp’s appeals in the U.S. have been exhausted.

Dr. Hugh Short had his elbow blown apart by Kopp in 1995 because he chose to help women with a fully legal and necessary medical procedure.

He never practised medicine again, and never said a word about it publicly for nearly 14 years. But yesterday Short spoke to The Spectator, his voice clear and crisp on the phone.

“I’m doing all right,” he said.

While it is unfortunate that Kopp will not have these crimes officially added to his record, it would only be seen as further cause for celeb to his fellow extremists and serve no purpose sentence wise as he is already serving actual life.

Source

Blog for Choice 2009

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Fear often causes people who can only see black and white to further insulate themselves against those things they cannot fathom.

The fearful wrap themselves in cloaks of rules and theologies which offer no variation, brook no deviation and punish those who see beyond the blinders of a forced faith.

So it is with those who wish to enforce pregnancy at any cost. The concept of people, women in particular, living a life of personal autonomy and freedom is foreign to them and therefore scary. There are those who feel that their religion speaks this to them, and indeed many pulpits preach this. And there are those who see power as their god given right and therefore use those blinded by faith to further their power grab.

This scenario has played out politically across America for some years now with many in the political sphere echoing the sentiments of the extremists for political gain. After all they will do as they are told and if told from the pulpit to go vote for a certain person because they will support and enact their religious tenets they will show up and vote. A boon to any politicos career.

The incrementalist approach to enacting fundamentalist religious ideals as laws by which all must live started with the issue of abortion. As any good advertiser knows it is easier to sell something that resonates on an emotional level, can be reduced down to misleading sound bites and visuals and/or that can be framed as a moral absolute. Abortion fit the bill perfectly.

Women’s rights are a battle not yet won in America and in the grand scheme of things abortion rights are relatively new and certainly not affirmed in any constitutional way. As long as there are people willing to see human rights as a subject for debate there will be those ready and willing to take them away.

The fight to remove women’s rights started with abortion. Debating limits, reasons, whether or not a woman has actually thought about hence the waiting periods and forced ultrasounds and the move to declare eggs persons.

When two persons inhabit the same body whose rights prevail? If a foetus is a person endowed with the rights and responsibilities of a person and the state judges that a woman cannot have an abortion to save her life and subsequently dies and somehow the foetus is saved is the foetus guilty of manslaughter? Is the state an accessory to the fact? Or is the taking of women’s lives somehow ok? Apparently in the view of the extremists women are empty vessels for men to fill with seed and if that vessel breaks is easily replaced with another. The reality is that abortion is but the first right they want to revoke. Contraception is already on the hit list. And no they do not support programs to help support the children resulting nor even to pay for the maternity bills.

Forced Pregnancy or Forced Abortion is There a Difference?

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Anti-choice groups are taking the recent story of officials trying to force a woman in China to have an abortion, to reiterate their hatred of UNFPA whom they claim is implicit in this action.
UNFPA’s mission statement reads;

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.

UNFPA because everyone counts.

It is hard to see how anyone could take issue with that, but then we know that choice of any kind is anathema to the forced pregnancy types. Because they are willing to force people to adhere to their rules and beliefs they cannot fathom that those of us who believe in choice believe in actual choice Meaning that we do not support forcing issue into or out of a woman’s womb. UNFPA in fact supports the choice to be mother through their campaign to make motherhood safer;

Every minute, a woman in the developing world dies from treatable complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Every minute, a family is devastated. The lives of surviving children are put at risk. Communities suffer. And for every woman who dies, as many as 20 others are seriously harmed by fistula or other injuries of childbearing.

UNFPA’s strategy for preventing maternal mortality includes:

* Family planning to reduce unintended pregnancies
* Skilled care at all births
* Timely emergency obstetric care for all women who develop complications.

UNFPA also advocates at many levels for the right of mothers to give birth safely. It spearheads the global Campaign to End Fistula, a collaborative initiative to prevent this devastating injury of childbirth and to restore the health and dignity of those who have been living with its consequences. And it is working to address the shortage of skilled midwives in much of the developing world.

However, based on the most recent statistics, maternal deaths are declining far too slowly to meet the MDG and ICPD target for a 75 per cent reduction by 2015.

UNFPA also helps in providing contraceptives and of course preventing pregnancy is the best way to prevent abortion.

Yet the shrieking continues unabated

LifeNews.com

Egged on by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, Obama has promised to restore funding to the UNFPA, the UN agency that has worked hand-in-hand with Chinese family planning officials.

Not only do Obama and his pro-abortion friends ignore the plight of women like Tursun, they’re willing to send our money to the UN group that gives the people who imprisoned her in a hospital for a forced-late term abortion a pat on the back.

“Obama to fund forced abortions” screams another.

Strangely we are to believe that their desire to force pregnancy is somehow less coercive or less a denial of human rights than forced abortion.

For a more realistic assessment we turn to RH Reality Check

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, does not support coercion or abortion. It follows the mandate of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) which clearly states that reproductive health-care programmes should provide the widest range of services without any form of coercion. All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so. In addition, the global community has decides that abortion should never be promoted as a method of family planning.

[emphasis mine]

Congratulations to Arzigul Tursun on her continuing pregnancy. May all women around the world have the opportunity to control their reproductive choices.

Palin’s Plank

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Now, finally, we have very solid planks in the platform that will allow us to build an even stronger foundation for our country. It’s all good and it’s encouraging. You would maybe have assumed that we would have gotten further away from those strong planks. But no, they’re there, they’re solid, we stand on them and again I believe that it is the right agenda for the country at this time. Very, very clear and contrasted tickets in this election November 4th. People are going to see the clear contrasts, you just go to the planks in our platforms and that’s where you see them. …Sarah Palin

Anti-Choice – Anti-Truth

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Members of the anti-abortion group VoteYesForLife.com are filing a complaint with the FCC over ads they claim are false and misleading. False and misleading. Where have we heard that before? Oh yes Crisis Pregnancy Centres;

* The centers provided false and misleading information about a link between abortion and breast cancer. There is a medical consensus that induced abortion does not cause an increased risk of breast cancer. Despite this consensus, eight centers told the caller that having an abortion would in fact increase her risk. One center said that “all abortion causes an increased risk of breast cancer in later years,” while another told the caller that an abortion would “affect the milk developing in her breasts” and that the risk of breast cancer increased by as much as 80% following an abortion.
* The centers provided false and misleading information about the effect of abortion on future fertility. Abortions in the first trimester, using the most common abortion procedure, do not pose an increased risk of infertility. However, seven centers told the caller that having an abortion could hurt her chances of having children in the future. One center said that damage from abortion could lead to “many miscarriages” or to “permanent damage” so “you wouldn’t be able to carry,” telling the caller that this is “common” and happens “a lot.”
* The centers provided false and misleading information about the mental health effects of abortion. Research shows that significant psychological stress after an abortion is no more common than after birth. However, thirteen centers told the caller that the psychological effects of abortion are severe, long-lasting, and common. One center said that the suicide rate in the year after an abortion “goes up by seven times.” Another center said that post-abortion stress suffered by women having abortions is “much like” that seen in soldiers returning from Vietnam and “is something that anyone who’s had an abortion is sure to suffer from.”

PDF false-and-misleading-health-information

So we know they are coming from a place of truth then.

Here is what Proposition 11 entails

For the second time since 2006, South Dakota voters are being asked to outlaw almost all abortions. A ballot initiative called Initiated Measure 11 would ban the procedure except in cases of rape, incest and a narrow interpretation of the health and life of the woman.

Voters rejected a more restrictive measure in 2006, but polls suggested that South Dakotans would have voted yes if it had included exceptions. A group called Vote Yes for Life soon pushed the new version, which they hope will prevent more than 700 abortions a year and produce the case that will overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion nationwide.

The ads to which the anti-choice group objects states that;

“These claims are being made, almost unbelievably, that the government will decide when a woman needs an abortion, and not her physician,” said Aberdeen lawyer Rory King, who helped to draft the initiated measure. “We object strenuously to and oppose this deceitful advertising.”

AL

and here is a doctor who specializes in high risk pregnancy care;

Marvin Buehner, a pro-choice Rapid City doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, said the law “would amount to a total ban.”

“If there’s a risk of a Class 4 felony if I don’t meet the ambiguous standard of ‘serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily organ or system,’ there’s no way I would consider doing an abortion for health reasons,” Buehner said. “This represents incredible government interference in the practice of medicine.”

WP

One can’t help but feel that their real objection is to people knowing the truth.

More on Prop. 11 here: http://www.sdhealthyfamilies.org/