Life Links 11-8-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Pittsburgh area abortion protester and sidewalk counselor Meredith Parente. Parente is accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Act for allegedly shoving two abortion clinic escorts. Looking over the FACE Act, I’m struggling to see how shoving volunteer clinic escorts (if it actually happened) would violate the FACE Act. How does shoving clinic escorts impede someone looking for an abortion from entering the clinic?
The Justice Department press release notes: “The FACE Act prohibits the use of force against any person providing or obtaining reproductive health services, or those seeking to do so, with the intent to injure, intimidate or interfere with that person.”
Volunteer clinic escorts aren’t providing (unless “providing” is used in an incredibly broad sense) reproductive health services nor are they seeking them.
- Overheard regarding Russian abortions:
Women of all ages used to fill gynecologist Lyubov Yerofeyeva’s Soviet state clinic, lined up by the dozen for back-to-back abortions. “It was more common to take sick days for an abortion than for a cold in those days,” [Yerofeyeva] said.
- Indian officials have raided another suspected illegal abortion clinic and arrested the husband-wife abortionist team:
The two-room clinic was allegedly run by a couple without having mandatory certificates and permission of the Punjab health department. During raids, the health department team has seized blood soaked clothes, placenta of delivery, medicines and other instruments.
“Ashok Kumar and his wife Devinder Kumari were working as doctors, conducting deliveries and selling medicines without having any certificate,” said Surinderpal, district family planning officer of Patiala, who was the member of the raiding team.
- Dennis Byrne compares the use and acceptance of graphic images used to dissuade the public from smoking and from abortion:
For years, pro-life groups have been condemned for trying to publish (mostly unsuccessfully in the mainstream media) gruesome images of aborted fetuses. The opposition to their publication comes down to something like this: It coarsens public discourse or, more generally, it will offend. Mysteriously, though, that argument didn’t seem to occur to liberals that oppose publication of the “products of pregnancy termination” while at the same time favoring the forced display of the “products of smoking.”
We’re in a gray free-speech area, but it occurs to me that there is one significant difference: Pro-life advocates have not used the force of law to require that gruesome images of aborted fetuses be prominently displayed on the exterior of abortion clinics for all to see.
Byrne links to this video of the graphic anti-smoking ads encouraged by the FDA:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8WIj1_cNdE[/youtube]

“How does shoving clinic escorts impede someone looking for an abortion from entering the clinic?”
Watching a protestor physically assault another person isn’t intimidating enough, actually. Pro-life crusaders should be ashamed of this milquetoast display of opposition to abortion~ Why not hit patients directly with those bloody fetus posters, make ’em run a true gauntlet?
You said it Megan!
Why not hit patients directly with those bloody fetus posters, make ‘em run a true gauntlet?
I think the posters showing them what they are doing when they commit abortion are enough. You wouldn’t want to damage the signs. ;)
That is so so true about the ridiculous duplicity of forcing BY LAW the disgusting, disturbing images of the effects of smoking and yet crying foul when the disgusting, disturbing images of the effects of abortion are displayed voluntarily. Really, guys? It’s the same thing. If we tried to force pictures of aborted babies to be posted outside of every abortion clinic, every pro-abort would throw a massive tantrum about “scaring clients” and “disturbing people.”
I’m not a smoker and those pictures of blackened lungs and old, shriveled, gray people with voice boxes scare me. Think of the children! Oh my word they give me nightmares. I was never going to smoke in the first place so why assault my senses with those frightening images? (sarcasm, sort of)
But seriously. With a procedure as dangerous and deadly (both to baby and mama), don’t you think they ought to be warned? Come one, people. Let’s not have these double standards.