Every state and municipality that has either passed or
attempted to pass laws requiring abortion clinics to include mandatory
sonograms during treatment has met with vehement opposition to such requirements
from, among others, the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL).
So I find it somewhat disingenuous for NARAL to accuse
Crisis Pregnancy Centers of that very thing.
“Anyone
seeking health-care services should receive comprehensive, unbiased, medically
and factually accurate information. Women facing unintended pregnancy deserve
no less. When women are fully informed, they are better able to make
responsible and appropriate decisions about their reproductive health. Mindful
of this, the anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and
manipulate the information doctors give women facing unplanned pregnancies.” (1)
NARAL argues that the Centers, “continue their campaign to misinform women about abortion and to dissuade women from exercising their right to choose…” They also state that, “Women are entitled to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information with which they can make their own decisions.” I would like to know how the inclusion of a sonogram during treatment can be considered biased. And how does the exclusion of a sonogram enhance a woman’s right to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information?
NARAL is a large tax-exempt
501(c), eligible to receive contributions deductible as charitable
donations. (2) On NARAL’s website, they say they oppose “bans on safe
abortion methods that protect women’s health,” and “Dangerous laws that
jeopardize young women’s health and safety,” and “distortions of science to
instill fear.”(3)
The truth is they have thwarted attempts to bring abortion
clinic regulations in line with existing requirements for any other medical
facility. Jeopardizing women’s lives in their view is suggesting they carry
their baby full term. And while science pushes steadily back the curtain of “personhood”
by showing just how alive and human a baby is earlier and earlier in a
pregnancy, and doctors save early births at ever earlier points in pregnancy,
they want a blanket thrown over such research and procedures. After all, if a
child was a child at delivery before, and at five months of a pregnancy now, what
can their organization say when scientists stand up and tell them that all the
requirements for human life are complete at conception? That would mean
abortion is tantamount to murder.
The
government should support legitimate, comprehensive reproductive-health
clinics, rather than centers whose goals are to prevent women from exercising
their constitutionally protected right to choose. (1)
Is that it? Rights trump human life?
Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz) introduced into the
House of Representatives, H.R.3541, “The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.” The
intent of the legislation is to eliminate the use of abortion to choose the sex
of the child, that is to say, aborting a child because the parent(s) wanted a
boy instead of a girl, or vice-versa.
Painting the legislation’s supporters as women hating men
who oppose prenatal care, equal pay, and contraception, NARAL promises to
defeat any law that would prevent a woman from having an abortion for any
reason. Nancy Keenan, head of NARAL, sees it as an attack on a woman’s right to
choose, and insists NARAL has always been opposed to the use of abortion for
sex selection. (4)
Taking her cue from Margaret Sanger, Keenan holds abortion
as a sacrosanct right.
I agree with Keenan in that I think the legislation will
not have the intended effect. Planned Parenthood and their ilk will no more report
sex selection abortions than they have teen rape victims that come to their
clinics for abortions.
But I will say dismissing the bill is throwing the baby out
with the bathwater. Seeing no baby anyway, NARAL will disagree.
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