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Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Key Conservatives Behind S. Dakota’s Abortion Law Appear Clueless as to What Planned Parenthood Do

Author:     STEPHEN C. WEBSTER
Source:     The Raw Story
Publication Date:     Friday, March 4th, 2011 -- 10:37 am
 Link: Key Conservatives Behind S. Dakota’s Abortion Law Appear Clueless as to What Planned Parenthood Do
Stephan:   The Willful Ignorance of the far Right is what makes them so dangerous. If you base your decisions on ideology not facts, you only get it correct by chance. That people like this are making policy ought to concern all of us. If you are a woman I do not understand why you are not outraged, although I know there are many women who support this intrusion into a woman's control over her own body -- unbelievable, as I find that. Imagine men being required to account for every sperm. If it had the same level of priority as this madness about controlling women, some kind of technology would arise. Suppose each fertile man had to go in each month to a government office where they would measure this. You have expended 1 trillion sperm this month -- the average is 111 million per ejaculation -- please answer under penalty of perjury, how many wet dreams did you have? How often did you masturbate? How many times did you have sex with your partner? How many times with somebody else?

Abortion is already a heavily regulated medical procedure, but Republicans in South Dakota are poised to mandate the harshest regulations of any state yet, including a requirement that women visit an anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy center’ before the procedure.

The new requirements are part of a bill that cleared the state’s legislature yesterday. It would require not only a visit to an anti-abortion group, but also a 72 hour wait before seeing a doctor. About half of states require patients to wait 24 hours, making South Dakota’s the longest wait requirement in the nation.

But in conversations with Raw Story, the bill’s cosponsor in the S. Dakota Senate, along with one of its chief proponents in private life, both appeared to be confused on the basic truth of what Planned Parenthood is.

In short, both key anti-abortion advocates appear to be operating under deeply flawed assumptions about the nature of womens’ health services in the United States.

And now, they’re actually writing the laws.

Planning for parenthood

The Planned Parenthood Federation of American (PPFA) is perhaps best known for abortion services, thanks to media campaigns launched by its religious conservative critics.

In actuality, the vast majority of their services have nothing to do with providing abortions.

PPFA, one of […]

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