Women Are Now Legally Lied To About Abortion

It used to be that pregnant women needing health care and accurate information were the most protected class in the war over abortion rights.  That has now changed.  The Bush administration has crammed through a midnight regulation that a health care worker can exercise a “right of conscience” to refuse to perform procedures, offer advice or dispense prescriptions if it offends “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”  While the right of a physician to opt out of a procedure has been in force for decades, with this new regulation the right of a woman to get needed care can turn on the preferences of a pharmacist, a nurse or an ambulance driver.

And in South Dakota, a law now in effect requires a doctor performing an abortion to read a script provided by the state telling the patient she is about to “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” with whom she has an “existing relationship.”

The doctor must have her patient sign each page of a form indicating that she has been warned of the “statistically significant” risks of the procedure, including “increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.” These “risks” are almost completely unsupported by the scientific literature. A new comprehensive study released by Johns Hopkins found “no significant differences in long-term mental health between women in the United States who choose to terminate a pregnancy and those who do not.” The disparity between the empirical data and the mandatory script thus forces physicians into a Hobson’s choice between providing patients with accurate medical information, and possible license suspension and misdemeanor charges.

So, doctors can’t be forced to do abortions, which is understandable.  But in South Dakota they’re forced to give misinformation under the informed consent law.  This is in spite of the fact that reproductive choice is constitutionally protected.  Conservatives love to talk about the “nanny state” proffered by liberals, but these kinds of laws insisted upon by anti-choice conservatives bring that term to a whole new level.

While anti-choice activists claim they are taking the high moral ground, their methods are sometimes quite devious.  On Friday night’s TV show, Kristan Hawkins and Sarah Hardin of “Students for Life” came on to brag about a sting operation they conducted by having 20-something women pose as underage teenagers and going to Planned Parenthood clinics to claim they’d been raped by an older man.  Instead of respecting the right of other women to make their own choices, they took up valuable time and resources in this game of “gotcha” to push their own agenda.

My confrontation with these women has Jill Stanek referring to me as “disgusted” with myself for “being forced to play a liberal defending morally bereft positions and actions.”  Then she questions how I slept after that show. (I didn’t; I went up to do my radio show instead.  Then I went home and slept like a baby).

This is the woman who accused President-elect Obama of infanticide and who testified before Congress that she saw babies taken into a soiled utility room and left to die at the hospital where she used to work.  Unclear to me is why she didn’t intervene at the time if she believed babies were being taken to their deaths.

Stanek’s views include supporting domestic violence against women who inform their husbands they’ve had abortions.  Writing at World Net Daily, Stanek referred to the scene in Godfather II where Michael hits Kay after she says she had an abortion as the reaction of “a real man,” unlike the “cowardly male choice” of respecting a woman’s right to choose.

This reminds me of Matthew 7:4-5 where it is asked, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye when you do not see the log in your own eye?”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.