Read the story of Pearl Joy at Townhall and at her family’s blog.
Will she survive infancy? Will she have a “normal” life? I don’t know. The problem is…neither do her doctors, who are belatedly admitting that fact after initially advising her mother to abort her. It worries me when humans arrogate the knowledge and power of God, who alone knows this precious baby’s fate.
Another undercover video sting has exposed the rot that underlies Planned Parenthood—this time catching a clinic manager in a clear violation of the law.
It shows a woman identified as Amy Woodruff, the office manager, responding to an unseen man and woman. The man says he is involved in sex work and wants to bring girls, some only 14 or 15 and illegal immigrants, for medical exams.
The manager says that 14-year-old girls should not admit their ages, because doing so triggers extra reporting requirements. “For the most part, we want as little information as possible,” she says.
I’m tempted to give PP a little credit for firing Woodruff, but the organization really has no shame. Or credibility, for that matter.
Stuart Schear, vice president for communications of the national federation, said in an interview on Wednesday that Planned Parenthood had “zero tolerance” for unethical behavior and that the behavior filmed in the video was “very isolated.”
Now that takes some nerve. Videos and taped conversations like this have been made in city after city, clinic after clinic. At what point, Mr. Schear, should we no longer consider these isolated cases? If you were truly concerned with ethics, why does it take the dogged efforts of undercover investigators to root out the corruption and sheer evil in your organization?
Once widely hailed as the source for breaking news and accurate coverage, CNN has been losing out to competitors—particularly Fox News—for a number of years. In posts past I’ve touched on a few of the reasons, such as the blatant bias of “journalist” Christiane Amanpour and the bile-spewing Joy Behar. (I have yet to comment on “Parker Spitzer.” Have you seen it? Incredible.)
Piling on top of the left-leaning bias—which, to be fair, is CNN’s prerogative, as is Fox’s tilt to the right—is its less-than-accurate coverage of controversial topics. In the past, for example, they’ve trotted out entirely misleading statistics regarding the prevalence of American-sourced weaponry in Mexico—data which is refuted by the FBI, which handles the gun traces—in order to support an anti-gun stance. Today CNN posted the following headline “Court condemns Irish ban on abortion” above a story on a significant European Court of Human Rights ruling.
The European Court of Human Rights condemned Ireland’s laws on abortion Thursday, ruling the country violated the human rights of a woman forced to go abroad to end her pregnancy.
It did not, however, recommend a change to Irish law, which prohibits abortion in all cases.
Except Irish law does not prohibit abortion in all cases. It allows exceptions in situations in which the mother’s life is at risk. In addition, the issue raised by the court’s ruling was not that the woman had to leave Ireland to get an abortion, but that Irish law does not clearly define how exceptions are to be granted or provide medical guidelines for doctors and patients in such cases and, therefore, she was unable to obtain pertinent medical advice. The court did not “condemn” the Irish ban on abortion. On the contrary, it left the law intact (as it has done with complete abortion bans in the tiny nations of Andorra, Malta, and San Marino) but found it violated the Irish Supreme Court’s own 1992 ruling because it does not provide an “effective or accessible procedure” for women to obtain exceptions.
The remainder of the article blathers on about how terrible Ireland is for its repressive law and lack of respect for the “human right” to abortion. Its inflammatory language is chosen specifically to frame a negative opinion of the Irish law and to support abortion. Read the actual ruling and see for yourself how CNN’s coverage stacks up in terms of accuracy and fairness with the New York Times, BBC (and here), Associated Press.
In his address to Congress Wednesday, President Obama asserted once again that his health care plan would not fund abortion. Let’s examine that claim using the most widely quoted current proposal.
HR3200 Subtitle B Section 2511 (p. 992) provides for “School-Based Health Clinics” (SBHC) to be funded with your tax dollars. This sounds great on the surface. Who doesn’t want to provide health care for our kids? The problem is that the language is, deliberately, overly broad and opens the door for groups such as Planned Parenthood, our top abortion provider, to open clinics in our schools.
(c) USE OF FUNDS.—Funds awarded under a grant under this section may be used for—
(1) providing training related to the provision of comprehensive primary health services and additional health services;
What, exactly, are the “additional health services” here? We don’t really know, as the bill does not specify. You can, however, connect the dots. Oversight of the clinics is left to the Secretary of Health & Human Services (SHSS), currently Kathleen Sebelius who is a radical pro-abortion advocate and supporter of late-term abortionists (e.g., the late George Tiller).
(d) CONSIDERATION OF NEED.—In determining the amount of a grant under this section, the Secretary shall take into consideration—
…
(3) other factors as determined appropriate by the Secretary.
This gives quite a bit of leeway to the SHSS. She could, for example, grant greater funding to SBHCs that provide “family planning” counseling of the sort she approves.
(l) DEFINITIONS.—In this section:
(1) COMPREHENSIVE PRIMARY HEALTH SERVICES.—The term ‘comprehensive primary health services’ means the core services offered by SBHCs, which shall include the following:
…
(C) OPTIONAL SERVICES.—Additional services, which may include oral health, social, and age-appropriate health education services, including nutritional counseling.
Sounds innocuous enough but what, exactly, are “age-appropriate health education services” under this definition? Would pro-abortion counseling qualify? Given the current SHSS you can count on it.
(3) SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CLINIC.—The term ‘school-based health clinic’ means a health clinic that—
(A) is located in, or is adjacent to, a school facility of a local educational agency;
…
(4) SPONSORING FACILITY.—The term ‘sponsoring facility’ is—
…
(D) a nonprofit health care agency;
Bingo! Planned Parenthood qualifies. In fact, they wouldn’t even have to operate on school grounds. Any Planned Parenthood clinic near a school would qualify under this plan.
Now back to Obama’s claim that our tax dollars would not fund abortions. First note that nothing in this bill excludes abortion and great leeway is given to the SHSS to determine how funds are meted out. There is no guarantee here that funds would not be used directly for abortion. Assume, for the sake of argument, that none are. Even in that case Planned Parenthood clinics on or near school grounds would qualify for these funds. In practice every dollar they receive for even legitimate purposes frees up another dollar to fund the rest of their practice…being America’s number one provider of abortions.
Republican Congressman Charles Wilson may have been out of line concerning the venue of his outburst, but he was correct. Mr. Obama, you lie.