Pro-life news brief 5-20-13
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- In Arkansas, a man has been charged with domestic battery and negligent homicide for running over his pregnant girlfriend with a car. The woman, who was around 20 weeks pregnant, survived but the child did not.
- A woman in Great Britain with severe mental health problems is asking for permission to have an abortion at 23 weeks:
The 37-year-old, who suffers from bipolar and paranoid delusions, had planned the pregnancy with her husband and previously seemed happy to be expecting a child. But last month, the woman, who is 23 weeks pregnant, became convinced that she wanted a termination.She wants to have a medical abortion, rather than surgery, which means a decision needs to be made “within a matter of days”….
Dr T said he believed she had “the ability to understand the court proceedings,” but that she was not capable of making an informed decision about her unborn child. “Because of her persecutory delusions she refuses to take on information which she should be taking on to perform a balanced decision.”
- Some abortion advocates in Congress are targeting crisis pregnancy centers, claiming they want to ensure that pregnant women aren’t deceived:
No one should ever be subjected to misleading information when they are seeking health care, especially during pregnancy,” [NJ Sen. Robert] Menendez (pictured left) said. “We have worked too hard to expand the availability of women’s health care services to have any confusion created by those who would deliberately deceive a woman to suit their own purposes.”
Too bad Menendez doesn’t feel the same way when it comes to abortion clinics deceiving women.
- In Washington State, a man who raped and impregnated a preteen girl and took her to Planned Parenthood for an abortion has been sentenced to 6 years in jail and then he’ll have to leave the country:
Luis Gonzalez-Jose, 31, raped the girl at a home in rural Whatcom County while her mother was in the shower, according to charging documents filed in Whatcom County Superior Court.
He brought the girl to a Planned Parenthood clinic in August 2012. She told staff members that her 14-year-old boyfriend impregnated her, but she couldn’t give the boy’s name or address. Six weeks after the abortion, the girl told a detective how she had really become pregnant. Gonzalez-Jose had insisted “it would be best for her” to not have the baby, according to the documents.
Gonzalez-Jose pleaded guilty to second-degree rape of a child in April. The girl’s family refused to cooperate with prosecutors, according to a Department of Corrections report.
A previous article from the Bellingham Herald indicates Planned Parenthood alerted Child Protective Services.
[Image via asbarez.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
So, what… they’re targeting CPCs because the abortion industry just isn’t getting enough repeat business or something?
96% of Planned Parenthood’s “services” to pregnant women is ABORTION.
Of course, this is why they’re looking to take down pregnancy centers.
Rep. Menendez is an elitist who believes that young women and poor women ought to have more abortions. He believes that anyone who tries to save help a woman and save her child’s life is “lying.”
Meanwhile — we have Lila Rose to thank for the Planned Parenthood clinic who felt compelled to obey the law concerning the reporting of possible abuse. Unfortunately, the child was still murdered, the teenager was still raped and Planned Parenthood still got paid.
Regarding Menendez: First of all, if I were him, I would not touch this with a ten-foot pole. He has been tainted with a prostitution scandal.
Next: this will be fun! A throw-down regarding whether abortion clinics or crisis pregnancy centers are deceptive! Bring it on!!!!!!
If any such legislation gets approved, someone can thrown down a parallel measure for abortion clinics. I cannot believe the pro-choice forces are pursuing this avenue.
First: “women’s health care services.” How is abortion a “health care service?” It does not prevent any recognized ICD-codable illness, and it does not cure any ICD-codable illness. It is not palliative care.
That’s it. health care either prevents illness, ameliorates illness, or provides palliative care in illness. that’s it.
In 2011, the Institute of Medicine, a gov’t supported but independent group tasked with taking big-picture views of health and healthcare, released their quickly-formed “Preventive Services for Women” report.
In this, they noted the value of encouraging a range of women’s healthcare issues, such as Pap smears. This report, following on the heels of the institution of Healthcare Reform, was handed to Kathleed Sebelius, who nearly instantly used this evidence report to make the declaration that these preventive services would have no copay in Obamacare.
All fine and good. That makes STD prevention and cancer prevention something of a ‘public good,’ or part of the ‘commons,’ worth the redistribution of tax dollars. Arguably, we are all better off when we have tax dollars used for roads, fire stations, reducing the prevalence of STDs in the population, and avoiding cervical cancer.
But this report also included birth control coverage.
The ONLY reason to fit birth control in this type of tax money redistribution is to argue that the children of the poor and middle-class pose a threat to our common good, as does cervical cancer treatment costs.
Birth control doesn’t prevent any disease, and it does not cure any disease. It is not palliative care.
http://www.iom.edu/Activities/Women/PreventiveServicesWomen.aspx
You can read the report. They don’t frame BC as they frame the other issues – HPV, gestational diabetes, intimate partner violence.
After addressing all of these, the report – the long report not the summary – approaches the issue gingerly, and basically acknowledges that the publically-funded/free BC issue is not so much a healthcare issue as it is a matter of social engineering. That is, these low-SES women will pop out babies that will be a burden to those of us in the stable-classes — so we better let those no-constraint animals continue to have sex, but with birth control funded by us.
The science/medical establishment doesn’t care about reality. Menendez and those throwing up this proposal don’t care abt reality.
This is classism. We educated elites have a view of the world, and we are going to impose it on you by way of the avenues open to us – that we control by our position in society.
Ad we get to use any of these means to quash anyone pointing out how we are abusing our power. Like the crisis pregnancy centers.
You don’t like it? Be careful or the IRS will be on your tail.
Since the only service that PP offers is abortion and they hire others to “sell” their product I want to go on record saying that I am praying ALL abortion mills are shut down and we offer women better than abortion.
No one should ever be subjected to misleading information when they are seeking health care, especially during pregnancy,” [NJ Sen.Robert] Menendez (pictured left) said. “We have worked too hard toexpand the availability of women’s health care services to have any confusion created by those who would deliberately deceive a woman to suit their own purposes.”
Whoopsies. I thought he was talking about Big Abortion. Silly me.
I did not see this orchestrated “viewpoint” publication in JAMA until today: Gossett, Kiley, and Hammond. Contraception is a fundamental primary care service. JAMA May 15, 2013, Volume 309, Number 19.
In this, they declare: “Contraception is a preventive health service. Contraception protects women from health risks associated with unintended pregnancy.”
This is why there has been so much emphasis on greater birth spacing: the theory is that if you take birth control pills, then you are more likely to have births that are spaced farther apart, and then your eventual are less likely to experience some negative health outcomes. Now, the negative health outcomes are all for the baby; so BC is not even preventive of anythnig for the mother; it is possibly preventive for the next baby (or two). Associations between short (abt 6 month) time spans between pregnancies include low birth weight, early delivery, and small for gestational age.
A good article on this is JAMA 2006 Conde-Aguledo, Rosas-Bermudez, and Kafury-Goeta ‘birth spacing and risk of adverse perinatal outcomes.’
Menendez and Sebelius have gone all sanctimonious on this point. But there are a few limits to these data, and so to this argument
Here are three limits to their stretch of using child adverse outcomes as the point of taking BC for prevention:
1 the effects are not very profound. These adverse outcomes are low-incidence, and the increase in likelihood is around 50% more chance of an infrequent event. Buying two lottery tickets doubles your slim chance of winning the lottery.
2 there is a curvilinear relation: for the women who space children out TOO MUCH, these adverse events increase in likelihood – spacing of 2 to 5 years between children looks optimal, with spacing more brief or longer being assoc with elevated risk; so to avoid these birth outcomes, we are all supposed to limit ourselves to 2 or 3 kids so we can benefit from this preventive effect but alos avoid th ebirth defect risks assoc with having kids after 40 years of age;
3 these outcomes are heavily mixed up with another leading predictor: socio-economic status. Low-income women are at higher risk for each of these three outcomes. But studies vary in how they measure SES, and often do not measure it well. Years of education or household income will often be used, while it is better to use a more complete measure – in college we learned this – the Hollingshead Index.
Bonus: 4 -these ‘adverse outcomes, themselves, are only indicators of elevated chance of other bad outcomes; they are not necessarily bad outcomes in themselves.
So, to prevent low birth weight is not exactly the same as preventing an illness or a disability. There are plenty of kids born early, and small, who grow up just fine.
So, realistically, this is ALL quite a stretch. But a politically favorable stretch.
Bonus: 5 – with increasing exposure to BC, and fewer births, you move into the range of trouble for two other ‘adverse outcomes’ that are genuine: blot clots from BC, and breast cancer from not having enough babies. BC risk for the avg woman, not those genetically predisposed such as Angelina Jolie).
Outcomes for the women themselves: A review was done by World Health Org: Report of a WHO Technical Consultation on Birth Spacing. Geneva, Switzerland, 13-15 June 2005.
Page 9 notes: they simply cannot scrounge up ‘adverse outcomes’ for the women themselves.
So, we are going to hear a lot of smoke about how a war on tax-payer funded BC for all women is going to pitch our nation’s women into some health care crisis.
But BC is a lifestyle treatment, akin to cosmetic surgery, tattoing, hair transplant surgery, or Viagra. You partake of a drug or procedure to have a certain lifestyle, not ot prevent or cure disease. Sure, these are delivered in clinical, hygienic settings by trained licensed people, but that does not make it preventive or curative.
Sebelius and everyone knows all of this. The IOM report acknowledged this. Now, with this recent JAMA ‘viewpoint,’ which I am sure was coordinated along with all of the IRS 501-c-4 investigations for political purposes, the issue gets taken just anotehr half step so that BC, arguably, if you squint just right, looks like “healthcare.” “Fundamental” “healthcare.”