Recently in Abortion Category

Will Saletan notes a pretty savage irony in the House health care bill fight. Excerpt:

I don't mean to exaggerate the House and Senate bills. They don't nationalize medicine or set up a single-payer system. As socialism goes, they're modest. But they do mandate, standardize, and subsidize health insurance. They mix public with private. And when you do that, you invite public-sector problems into matters that used to be nobody's business.

One of these problems is that people don't like their tax money being used for procedures that offend them. You may think that's stupid. You may point out that your tax money is used for wars you don't like. But you don't have two or three dozen swing votes in the House. Pro-life Democrats do. They don't have the clout to ban abortion, but they have the clout to keep tax money from paying for it.

Until health care reform came along, this wasn't your problem. It was a problem for women who depended on public programs like Medicaid. But you wanted a better world. You wanted health insurance for everyone, and you wanted the government to help pay for it. Congratulations. You've brought the tax moralists into your life.

And, supremely:

There's something poignant about the last-minute outrage of the pro-choice groups. The complaints they're leveling--that people had more choices in the private market, that the House bill radically upsets this market, and that it violates Obama's promise not to deprive anyone of their existing coverage--are hardly novel. Republicans have issued such warnings all year. But liberals didn't pay attention until the coverage in jeopardy was abortion.

UPDATE: TMatt writes about how the media completely missed the reality of pro-life Democrats, and why they matter. I love this bit from the WSJ Terry quotes at the end of his entry:

... Democrats now have to make some decisions that may anger their Planned Parenthood wing. The fight itself will be interesting, judging from a claim by Diana DeGette (D., Col.) in yesterday's Washington Post that 40 Democrats will vote against a final bill unless the Stupak amendment is stripped out. Of course, if it is stripped out, that will put even more pressure on those 64 Democrats who voted for the amendment.

"We won because [the Democrats] need us," says Mr. Stupak. "If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don't say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won't vote with them the next time they need us -- and that could be the final version of this bill."

Reason to give thanks down in Bryan-College Station, Texas. From a local news report:

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson's life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

"I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Jonhson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

"It seemed like maybe that's not what a lot of people were believing any more because that's not where the money was. The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

"I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."

Deo gratias! This is fantastic news.

People keep asking why I haven't written anything about the murder of pro-life demonstrator James Pouillon, allegedly by a man who, say police, didn't like his graphic protest signs. The reason is because I don't know what useful thing I might say. Like President Obama said today, the killing is deplorable. But I don't see that it tells us anything important, or anything at all, about the wider pro-choice movement. I don't like it when pro-choicers cynically use violence against abortionists as an excuse to condemn all pro-lifers. It's unfair and inaccurate, though perhaps for pro-choicers emotionally satisfying and politically useful. I see no reason to engage in that sort of thing from the pro-life side. The killer is a hateful criminal whose action doesn't tell us much of anything about the pro-choice side -- though I am glad to hear our pro-choice president condemn the shooting.

Very good column by Ross Douthat today, comparing Eunice Kennedy Shriver's public legacy with her late brother's. The great difference between the two? Abortion. Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a pro-life liberal, and saw no difference between advocating for the poor and the weak, and the unborn. Ted used to agree, but, as they say, "grew in office" when the cultural winds shifted. Excerpt:

For abortion opponents, cruel ironies abounded in this sibling disagreement. Because of Eunice Shriver's work with the developmentally disabled, a group of Americans who had once been marginalized and hidden away -- or lobotomized, like her sister Rosemary -- was ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life. But because of laws that her brother unstintingly supported, that same group was ushered out again: the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, for instance, is estimated to be as high as 90 percent.

In 1992, Eunice participated in the last significant effort to push the Democratic Party away from abortion on demand, petitioning her party's convention to consider "a new understanding" of the issue, "one that does not pit mother against child," but instead seeks "policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers and their children, both before and after birth." That same summer, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld a near-absolute right to terminate a pregnancy -- a decision made possible by her brother's demagogic assault on Robert Bork five years earlier, which helped doom Bork's nomination to the court.

Translation of this ad, (according to ShanghaiList):

Students are our future, but when something happens to them, who will help and protect them? Chongqing Huaxi Women's Hospital has started Students Care Month, where those students who come to get an abortion can get 50% off if they show their student ids. Abortion surgeries are the most advanced in the world, won't stretch (your womb), won't hurt, it's quick, and you can do what you want afterward, it won't affect your studies or your work.

China has 13 million abortions per year -- equivalent to the entire state of Pennsylvania and, relative to population size, roughly four times the US rate.

There are no words for this kind of degeneracy. The thing speaks for itself.