Abortion

In early February Right Wing Watch reported on a bill in Arizona that would make it a felony for women from having abortions if the decision to terminate the pregnancy was based on race or sex. Yesterday, Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, allowing the biological father or the woman’s parents to sue abortion providers for damages if the doctor knowingly conducting the procedure on race or sex grounds:

Arizona is the first state in the nation to make sex- or race-selection abortions a crime.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed into law House Bill 2443, which makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion based on the sex or race of the fetus.

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Rep. Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix, said the only proof Montenegro offered was a magazine article on such practices in China and India.

The law allows the father of an aborted fetus - or, if the mother is a minor, the mother's parents - to take legal action against the doctor or other health-care provider who performed the abortion. If convicted of the felony, physicians would face up to seven years in jail and the loss of their medical license.

The law is a result of a right-wing campaign to smear abortion providers, notably Planned Parenthood, for allegedly targeting women of color in order to commit “genocide” against the African American community. Anti-choice groups have launched billboard campaigns using images of black children and President Obama, publicized the discredited “documentary” Maafa 21, and organized “Freedom Rides” against abortion-rights.

Susan Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute explains how activists who want to take away women’s reproductive rights are twisting the facts about abortion in minority communities. As Cohen explains, African American women’s disproportionate lack of access to contraception and healthcare has led not only to higher rates of unintended pregnancies but also to higher rates of sexually transmitted infections:

These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.

Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all. These higher unintended pregnancy rates reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time. Moreover, these realities must be seen in a larger context in which significant racial and ethnic disparities persist for a wide range of health outcomes, from diabetes to heart disease to breast and cervical cancer to sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV.

Last week we noted that Rick Santorum had filled in for Tony Perkins as co-host of "Today's Issues" with the American Family Association's Tim Wildmon. During the program, Santoum attempted to explain how Shariah law is incompatible with western civilization:

Jesus said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" and that huge piece of wisdom has really set the course for western civilization where you have civil laws and have civil penalties - we exact justice in a civil fashion - and then we have higher laws, we have God's law. Now our civil laws are supposed to comport with God's laws but sometimes they don't, and so it is always the obligation of those, for example, the issue of abortion - the civil law does not comport with God's law, in my opinion and I think the opinion of many people in this country and it is our obligation to continue to try and change that law. We have to live under the civil law, we have to obey that law because it is the civil law but we need to continue to try to change it to make sure that these laws, the laws our country, comport.

In the Islamic world, that is not the case. Mohammad did not say "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" because the civil law in Islam and the sacred law are one in the same. Shariah is both a civil code and a religious code.

So let me get this straight: Muslims want civil laws to comport to the dictates of their holy book, the Quran, so that the civil law and the religious law are one in the same.  And that is incompatible with western civilization ... because Religious Right activists are too busy operating under the principle that "our civil laws are supposed to comport with God's laws" as laid out in the Bible? 

What exactly is the difference between Santoum's assertion that is the obligation of Religious Right activists to make sure our laws comport with God's law and Shariah, which says the nation's civil laws and religious laws are to be one in the same?

After an anti-choice organization placed, and ultimately pulled, a New York billboard with the message “The Most Dangerous Place for an African American is in The Womb,” the group is now posting similar billboards in Chicago featuring President Obama. Jill Stanek, a radical anti-choice blogger, details the group Life Always and its new billboard in Obama’s hometown that reads: “Every 21 Minutes, Our Next Possible Leader Is Aborted.” Stanek writes that “Tomorrow, March 29, over 30 pro-life billboards will be unveiled on Chicago’s south side, where residents are predominantly black.”

The “Abortion as Black Genocide” theme in the anti-choice community continues to grow, with legislators even pushing bans on so-called “race-based abortion.” Kathryn Joyce of Political Research Associates explains:

Recent studies by the Guttmacher Institute found that abortion rates are indeed higher among women of color. African Americans, in particular, are thirteen percent of the population but account for 37 percent of all abortions. However, Guttmacher determined, this is due to their greater incidence of unwanted pregnancies, resulting from economic inequality and poor access to contraception and education. Nonetheless, the anti-abortion movement holds that Black and brown populations are being targeted – rather than served – by abortion providers who deliberately place clinics in inner-city, low-income neighborhoods.

The Florida Baptist Witness reports that Richard Land spoke at the Jacksonville Baptist Association’s Leadership Institute last week and said that America was on the verge of revival that would reverse all of the horrors that President Obama has inflicted upon this nation ... provided that none of the conservatives on the Supreme Court die before Obama can be voted out of office. 

Oh yeah, and Americans will also come to realize just how good they had it under George W. Bush:

Addressing abortion, Land said the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which effectively legalized abortion on demand, likely will be overturned during his lifetime. One pro-choice justice being replaced by a pro-life justice would result in a majority willing to overturn Roe, he said.

“We just need one more vote,” Land said, “which means that we need to pray that none of the justices that are conservatives die until after we get a conservative president. And then one of the liberals has to change.”

Since abortion was legalized in 1973, more Americans have been aborted each year than have died cumulatively in all the wars the nation has fought, according to Land. Yet abortion is not merely a moral issue, but also an economic one, he said.

“How many people that are not working would be working if we hadn’t killed those babies?” he asked. Unemployed Americans could be “making goods and services for those people, building homes for those people, building schools for those people, teaching in the schools for those people.”

Recent healthcare legislation also threatens the sanctity of human life, Land said. If so- called “Obamacare” is not repealed, elderly Americans will be denied life-saving medical procedures because of the cost involved, he said.

“I personally think that the greatest threat to the sanctity of human life right now is Obamacare,” he said, adding, “I have no compunction about telling you that everybody in this room will live a shorter life, and it will be more filled with pain and suffering—if Obamacare is not rescinded—than you would otherwise. They are going to ration care.”

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Land predicted that President George W. Bush will experience a similar fate as Harry Truman, who left office with a low approval rating but was appreciated decades later as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Evangelicals likely will not see a president in the near future who identifies with them as much as Bush, he said, calling Bush’s two inaugural addresses “extraordinary” and “insightful.”

“I suspect too many Americans didn’t realize what they had when they had George W. Bush,” Land said.

• The vote on Janet Porter's "Heartbeat Bill" has been delayed.
• Can the Religious Right please stop comparing themselves to those we resisted the Nazis? Pretty please?
• This is a real Washington Times headline: "Military indoctrinated on gays kissing, behavior."
• This is a real AEI lecture: The State of White America.
• Finally, Ralph Reed has named Ron Futrell as the organization’s Nevada Chairman.  For some reason, Reed doesn't mention that Futrell was a former television reporter who lost his job after he fled the scene of the accident in which he was involved.

On Monday, the State Department issued a joint statement in the UN’s Human Rights Council opposing the criminalization of homosexuality. Currently, well over 70 countries impose criminal penalties for gays and lesbians, and the statement has the support of 84 countries. According to the Family Research Council, however, the US is committing a great injustice by condemning the criminalization of people because of their sexual orientation. The FRC dubs it “Operation International Tolerance,” complete with a picture of Obama wearing a rainbow helmet:

The FRC claims that the resolution will “force acceptance of the world’s gays and lesbians,” and defended countries that criminalize homosexuality or “any behavior they think is harmful to society”:

While American forces bomb away at Libya, the Obama administration is launching another global offensive: Operation International Tolerance. As he looks on from South America, the President put troops on the ground today for a meeting of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, where his diplomats plan to strong-arm other countries into embracing homosexuality. In a major U-turn from the Bush years, the Obama administration is actually initiating an "anti-discrimination" resolution to force acceptance of the world's gays and lesbians. As recently as 2008, the United States refused to sign a similar declaration because President Bush thought it conflicted with the states' rights to pass things like marriage amendments.

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Obviously, FRC believes that homosexuals and transgenders shouldn't be subjected to violence. But this resolution goes well beyond that to endorsing a behavior that dozens of member nations oppose. No binding document of international law has ever recognized a universal "human right" to engage in sex with a person of the same gender. And although even the U.N. admits that "resolutions" like this one "aren't legally binding," they do help to create a legal norm. We've seen this similar approach with respect to abortion, where countries like the U.S. have tried to insinuate a "right" under international law where there is none. Our global neighbors have the freedom to believe that homosexuality is wrong--just as they have the freedom to legislate against any behavior they think is harmful to society. That freedom--and their very sovereignty--would be threatened by this effort.

• Zaid Jilani @ Think Progress: GA GOP Rep. Bobby Franklin Says America Is Like Qadaffi Because Abortion Is Legal.
• Alan Colmes: Franklin Graham: Japan Disaster Could Mean Second Coming.
• Alvin McEwen: Religious right leader Bryan Fischer: Obama is a boy president.
• Truth Wins Out: Scientist Calls On Apple to Remove ‘Ex-Gay’ app That Distorts His Research.
• Benjy Sarlin @ TPM: Herman Cain to Muslims: Stop Trying to Convert Us to Islam.
• County Fair: Washington Times' Knight Uses Anti-Bullying Legislation To Attack Muslims, Gays.
• Joe.My.God: JMG Wins 2011 GLAAD Media Award!

As personhood legislation sprouts up in states like Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Iowa, the radical anti-choice group Personhood USA also hopes to introduce their extreme (and unconstitutional) legislation in North Dakota. Personhood bills criminalize abortion and certain forms of birth control by granting legal rights to zygotes, declaring it a separate ‘person’ from the mother. Many doctors believe that such legislation would ban in vitro fertilization and prohibit doctors from giving medical assistance to women with serious pregnancy complications like ectopic pregnancies. The AP reports on North Dakota doctors speaking out against the radical legislation in their state:

Doctors told the North Dakota Senate's Judiciary Committee that it could affect couples using in vitro fertilization to try to have a baby as well as women who have complications in early pregnancy that will prevent an embryo from developing into a viable baby. Such complications include an ectopic pregnancy, which happens when a fertilized egg begins growing outside the uterus. The doctors who testified said they did not perform abortions.

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Although the measure exempts in vitro fertilization from criminal penalties, it includes language saying that "causing injury to a human being" is not justified.

Dr. Stephanie Dahl, a Fargo infertility specialist who works at North Dakota's only in vitro fertilization center, said the bill would make it illegal to do the procedure.

"The process of IVF may result in injury to an embryo," Dahl said. "It is unavoidable."

Dr. Shari Orser, a Bismarck obstetrician and gynecologist, told the committee that most eggs that are fertilized for in vitro fertilization never become viable embryos "and only a small percentage of embryos thought to be viable produce a child."

"To suggest that every embryo is a person is absurd," Orser said.

Orser said the law also would complicate the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. Without treatment, a tubal pregnancy can result in serious internal bleeding and death, she said.

Other conditions can result in a fetus developing without kidneys, lungs or a brain, Orser said.

"These diagnoses are often made in the first half of these pregnancies," Orser said. "Should a woman be forced to continue the pregnancy when she knows that her baby will die, or can she be spared the emotional distress and the risks of carrying a pregnancy to term?"

Tony Perkins took to The Hill today to argue that Planned Parenthood costs taxpayers billions of dollars because, he argues, by providing affordable contraception it raises the abortion rate, and by providing abortions it raises the STD rate.

First he acknowledges that the one study that he uses to back up the contraception-abortion link doesn’t actually conclude what he wants it to conclude. But that doesn’t stop him from contributing his own scientific analysis:

Earlier this year, the medical journal “Contraception” published a study, “Trends in the use of contraceptive methods and voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the Spanish population during 1997–2007.” The researchers noted that from 1997 to 2007, “the overall use of contraceptive methods increased from 49.1 percent to 79.9 percent.” During this same period, “The elective abortion rate increased from 5.52 to 11.49 per 1000 women.”

Although the article states, “The factors responsible for the increased rate of elective abortion need further investigation,” the relationship between increased contraception and increased abortion seems apparent.

I’d refer Perkins not only to common sense, but to this study in The Lancet and this USAID report citing numerous studies proving that access to contraception does, in fact, prevent unintended pregnancy.

Perkins goes on to argue that Planned Parenthood—which directs a full third of its budget to testing for and treating sexually transmitted diseases—is actually driving the STD rate in the United States because of the three percent of its budget that it spends on abortion services:

But the connection between Planned Parenthood’s so-called family planning and an increase in abortion is not the only manner in which the abortion giant is running up the taxpayer tab. A 2005 study from George Mason University suggests that as the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood is costing taxpayer billions of dollars a year by fueling the sexually transmitted disease pandemic.

According to researchers Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann, who examined over four decades of data related to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), there is a statistically verifiable link between legalized abortion and the rise in STDs. Klick and Stratmann make the argument that sexual behavior responds to economic incentives. In other words, as the laws and economies of scale, along with government subsidies made abortion more economically enticing, an increase in risky sexual behavior followed and with it STDs.

How much is this increase costing us? The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 19 million new STDs occur each year, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24. The estimated price tag is $15 billion dollars for healthcare costs alone!

So, Perkins’ plan is to take away the ways women have to prevent pregnancies and STDs, thereby scaring them into abstinence. Sounds like the Religious Right’s dream come true…but truly scary public policy.