My pro-abort sparring friend, columnist Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune, has weighed in on the Aurora Planned Parenthood situation.
And with a title like this, “In defense of Planned Parenthood’s deceptions in Aurora: Sometimes the only way to get fairness will make your foes cry foul,” you know madness is coming.
In fact, when I read Eric’s piece about 2a this morning, I found so much wrong with it, I knew I’d never get to sleep if I gave it too much thought. So I closed it up, like a surgeon who has found a body overridden with cancer.
But I’ve already received two emails on Eric’s column this morning from pro-life friends, so I can tell you’re feeling feisty. In fact, John Jansen wrote me, “After reading it, I felt like the mosquito at the nudist colony: I simply don’t know where to begin.”
Ok, have at it….

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Well of course Planned Parenthood representatives didn’t tell the truth to Aurora city officials while they were building a new clinic in the western suburb….

They hid behind the name of a subsidiary company, Gemini Office Development, and were misleadingly vague when asked along the way about the identity of prospective tenants for the $7.5 million facility.
Their goal was straightforward: To open a reproductive-health clinic on land zoned for such purpose.
But they had to use a certain amount of stealth because abortion is one of the services Planned Parenthood offers. And foes of abortion rights, longtime losers in the battle for public opinion, traditionally raise all kinds of rukus when Planned Parenthood comes into a community.
The foes not only picket construction sites, but they also send picketers out to harass subcontractors at their homes and businesses, try to spread alarm and disgust in the immediate neighborhoods and attempt to browbeat civic officials into implementing just the sort of craven, politically motivated delays we’re now seeing in Aurora.
Then when Planned Parenthood is revealed to have tried to prevent such pressure tactics by using a little creative subterfuge, the opponents of abortion-rights carry on indignantly, as though the deceptions were an effort to skirt the law.
In fact, the deceptions are an effort by Planned Parenthood to be sure the law is followed — to be sure their plans and proposals are considered as though they came from an organization engaged in lawful activity. Which, in fact, they do.
But in order to get that sort of fair treatment, bitter experience tells them they have to skirt the notice of those in the community who feel compelled to try to impose on everyone their opposition to abortion.
That view is deeply held, but poll after poll shows that, even after all the picketing and haranguing and hurling of moral opprobrium in the last 34 years, roughly 2 out of 3 Americans still support Roe v. Wade — the 1973 decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an early-term abortion (see polling data).
Aurora is turning into an object lesson: City officials, who cheerfully signed off on plans for the 22,000 square-foot clinic and who have known of the Gemini/Planned Parenthood connection since at least the last week of July when local papers and the Tribune broke the story, have been in a complete dither in recent weeks since abortion foes have been trying to turn the town into the epicenter of this never-ending national debate
In a skittish collapse in the face of pressure from activists, the Aurora City Council ordered an independent review of the legality of the tactics Planned Parenthood employed to fly under the radar. And even though there’s precious little to review — this isn’t a complicated case with reams of documents to pore over, after all, but a simple tale of misdirection — the alleged probe has dragged unaccountably on and on.
Tuesday, as if to underscore exactly why Planned Parenthood can’t be as upfront as Best Buy or Wal-Mart when it comes to a town, Aurora officials used the excuse of this ongoing investigation to prevent the clinic from opening on schedule.
Thursday, lawyers for Planned Parenthood and for Aurora will appear in front of U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle, who is expected to rule on Planned Parenthood’s request for an injunction to allow the clinic to open.
The irony here is that Planned Parenthood, with its broad menu of low-cost services that also includes contraceptive counseling, pregnancy testing, adoption referrals and disease screening, almost certainly does more to lower the overall number of abortions (by providing the birth control that blocks unwanted pregnancies) and to save lives than all of the protests, prayer vigils and campaigns of harassment by its enemies put together.
Do you disagree? Then resolve to fight fair in the arenas of politics, law and public opinion. Until then, stop crying foul.

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