{"id":156037,"date":"2016-11-04T18:46:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T22:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=156037"},"modified":"2016-11-04T18:46:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T22:46:22","slug":"why-dont-pro-choicers-want-to-talk-about-abortion-coercion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/why-dont-pro-choicers-want-to-talk-about-abortion-coercion\/","title":{"rendered":"Why don’t “pro-choicers” want to talk about abortion coercion?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alex Zielinski of the San Antonio Current is not happy<\/a> that pro-life lawyer and Justice Foundation president Allan Parker sent a letter<\/a> to Texas school districts offering guidance counselors and nurses training and resources on state law against coerced abortions.<\/p>\n

From Parker\u2019s letter:<\/p>\n

This important information deals with the laws concerning forced abortion and the legal responsibility of counselors and medical professionals to give the appropriate advice to students and report forced abortion to criminal authorities. Constitutional litigation against school personnel who were alleged to have participated in forced abortion has been upheld. If you haven\u2019t yet dealt with this issue at your school, chances are good that you will.<\/p>\n

Protect yourself against liability by knowing the laws and tools available so that you may correctly inform and give appropriate counsel to your students. If you learn of a forced abortion against a minor, you have a duty to report it to authorities. Forced abortion and actions leading up to it can constitute child abuse or other crimes that you have a duty to report. See attached letter to Mental Health Professionals which briefly explains the law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like pretty routine fare to me\u2014districts that already offer support to students pressured to abort can simply ignore the letter, and districts that are negligent in this regard desperately need a reminder. What\u2019s the harm?<\/p>\n

In Zielinski\u2019s mind, there\u2019s plenty of harm. But then, she is well-versed in finding outrage where none exists, such as calling Idaho biased against Planned Parenthood for leaving the organization\u00a0off a list of free providers of a service Planned Parenthood\u00a0doesn’t provide for free<\/em><\/a>, along with\u00a0declaring it racist to oppose banning race-based abortions<\/a>, and twisting a case of a mom scarring her newborn for life via attempted self-abortion into \u201cpunish[ing] women for seeking abortion”.<\/a><\/p>\n

Zielinksi writes in the Current of Allan Parker’s statements:<\/p>\n

“Many teenage daughters and adult women have been forced to have an abortion,” [Parker]\u00a0writes.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Current, Parker was unable to back up that sweeping\u2014and terrifying\u2014claim.<\/p>\n

“There is no real data on this issue,” [Parker]\u00a0conceded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don\u2019t worry, Alex, I can provide you with the data Parker couldn\u2019t. According to<\/a> a 2004 study published in the Medical Science Monitor, 64\u00a0percent\u00a0of women report feeling some sort of pressure to abort. There\u2019s not a lot of hard data on the subject (largely because the abortion industry isn’t interested in the answer<\/a>), but it\u2019s worth noting that in addition to the many anecdotes Live Action News has covered<\/a> over the years, there are also women who claim Planned Parenthood staff actually\u00a0forced them to abort<\/a> and ex-Planned Parenthood\u00a0personnel who admit it<\/a>. Zielinksi continues:
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

In Texas, a minor needs a parent’s sign-off before going through with an abortion. If their parents refuse, the girl can go to court to gain a judge’s approval, or a “judicial bypass,” meaning she must prove that she’s “mature” enough to have an abortion. Of course, no state or federal court has ever questioned if a minor is mature enough to give birth to a human being, let alone require a parent’s approval to do so.<\/p>\n

Parker said this is because one of the options result in death. And that “Texas is allowed to have bias in their law to be pro-life.”<\/p>\n

The Texas Supreme Court\u00a0made judicial bypass even harder for teens<\/a> last year, ruling that a minor can be denied an abortion if a judge simply\u00a0waits five business days without ruling on the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nonsense. As I explained back in January<\/a>, the rule changes simply close loopholes that make it easier for minors to get abortions without actually proving that their parents deserve to be cut out of the decision. Zielinski\u2019s reference to \u201cfive business days\u201d is particularly misleading\u2014what the court actually did was extend the amount of time a judge has to make a decision from two business days to five\u2014which has the effect of increasing teens\u2019 chances of getting a ruling at all. She goes on:<\/p>\n

Parker’s work as a lawyer has been questioned in the past by at least one federal judge, who called him incompetent for filing\u00a0“highly prejudicial and legally irrelevant”<\/a>\u00a0documents in court.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What were those \u201clegally irrelevant\u201d documents? The only one specified in the original report<\/a> is a picture of an aborted first-trimester baby\u2026 that supposedly had no bearing on an ultrasound law<\/em>. As in, a law all about imagery<\/em>. Incompetence was definitely at work here, but not on Parker\u2019s end. (Do you suppose the judge who berated him, Sam Sparks, also thinks Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was \u201cincompetent\u201d for discussing abortion imagery<\/a> in his partial-birth abortion decision?) More from Zielinksi:<\/p>\n

The Justice Foundation offers school counselors no information on how to work with a pregnant teen to get through school, access prenatal medical care, or understand her other legal rights. Instead, Parker said, he directs counselors to their local Crisis Pregnancy Centers\u2014a name for the religious anti-abortion organizations that use junk science and guilt-tripping to talk women out of getting an abortion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s more pathetic: contrasting Zielinski\u2019s condescension against the fact that she\u2019s straight-up lying about pregnancy centers<\/a>, or watching an abortion defender pretend to advocate for prenatal care while Planned Parenthood\u2019s prenatal care dropped 53.8 percent<\/a> from 2009 to 2013. Planned Parenthood\u2019s most recent annual report reveals<\/a>\u00a0that prenatal care (categorized under \u201cOther Women\u2019s Health Services\u201d) amounted to 17,419\u2014less than five percent of the 323,999 abortions the\u00a0organization\u00a0performed (which is itself falsely claimed<\/a> to be just three percent of Planned Parenthood\u2019s business\u2026meaning that by Planned Parenthood\u2019s own standards, their prenatal care is positively minuscule).<\/p>\n