Via Wikipedia:

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), also known as pregnancy resource centers, are non-profit organizations established by pro-life supporters that work to persuade pregnant women to give birth rather than have an abortion. Most CPCs are in the United States, and are usually affiliated with pro-life Conservative Evangelical CPC organizations, or a specific Roman Catholic or Conservative Evanglical church. Some CPCs operate as parachurch organizations, and may advise women regarding parenting and adoption.

The counseling services offered by crisis pregnancy centers use psychological pressure to discourage women from aborting. About a quarter of CPCs conduct sonograms as a way to persuade women not to abort.

CPCs are not concerned with neutrality and the best interests of each individual woman. They are solely interested in pressuring as many women as they possibly can into giving birth.

“A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby… If the girl who would be going to the abortion chamber sees your office with a similar name, she will probably come into your center.”

- Excerpted from Robert Pearson’s 1984 manual, How to Start and Operate Your Own Prolife Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center. Via TikvahGirl.

And what of the women who have experienced CPCs firsthand? Here are just a few blog testimonials I was able to find on the topic:

After making an appointment at a legitimate clinic, Allyson mistakenly walked into a CPC just down the street labeled “AAA Women for Choice.” The staff pretended to acknowledge her appointment, then forced her to watch an anti-choice propaganda film in order to receive her pregnancy test results.

Tripmom827 was insulted when staff at her local Crisis Pregnancy Center questioned her faith and told her that her doctors had conspired to fabricate genetic defect tests in order to persuade her to bring more business to the “abortion factory.”

Lauren pretended she thought she was pregnant in order to see how her local CPC would treat her. She was appalled by the manner in which the staff used rhetoric to funnel her toward one option and by the way they disregarded her feelings.

Yes, that’s a live cow being rolled by a forklift.

Video captured during the investigation of a leading California slaughterhouse shows “downed” cattle (animals too sick or injured to stand) being shocked repeatedly in their rectums, rolled by forklifts, jabbed in the eyes, and shot in the nose with high-intensity water sprays in an attempt to make them stand for inspection.

“These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things,” the investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. “This is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open.”

In addition to the blatant cruelty of using torture to try to make the animals stand, these efforts pose a serious public health crisis. At least 12 of the 15 documented cases of Mad Cow Disease in North America were reportedly in downed cattle. They have also often been laying in feces, which contributes to the risk of E. coli and salmonella contamination.

And where is this meat going? Why, to the school lunch program, of course:

Over the past five years, Westland has sold about 100 million pounds of frozen beef, valued at $146 million, to the Agriculture Department’s commodities program, which supplies food for school lunches and programs for the needy, according to federal documents.

A little more regulation of the meat industry may be in order, no?

Senators in Indiana and Pennsylvania are trying to pass bills that would allow pharmacists to “conscientiously object” to filling birth control prescriptions.

So, uh… since when are the decisions my doctor and I make about my personal reproductive health any of my pharmacist’s business? How many goddamn hoops should women have to jump through for a little control over their own reproduction?

In other news, the birth control pill evidently reduces the risk of developing ovarian cancer. Groovy.

If you were to ask a conservative man what he would do if someone restrained him and forcefully extracted his bone marrow, his answer would probably make mention of a veritable arsenal kept in his cabinet. He’d likely feel perfectly justified in killing any assailant who would dare to make any use of his body whatsoever without his consent. Whether or not the assailant needed the marrow to save his life would make very little difference.

Why? Because we have a unique right to our own bodies. If anyone wants something of them, they go through us. As much as our homes and property mean to us, the right to ownership over things is nothing compared to our right to bodily autonomy. This is why rape is rape and not ‘theft of sexual services.’ It’s why we don’t draft organ donors or force the population to relinquish a pint of blood every eight weeks. It’s also why forcing pregnancy is illegal and abortion isn’t.

The “pro-life” method of getting around this is claiming that pregnancy and motherhood are the natural purpose of women, and therefore a blessing, regardless of the circumstances. It’s bullshit. Anyone with any respect at all for women knows that each of us have our own hopes and goals in our lives, and sometimes they just don’t include pregnancy or children. For some women, it’s the ultimate joy in life, and for some of us it isn’t. Telling a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy that pregnancy is pregnancy and therefore a blessing is like telling a rape victim that sex is sex.

Here’s the bottom line: whatever the moral dilemma over humanity, personhood, and what that means for a fetus, women have the right to abortion because they have a right to decide what resides in and lives off of their bodies. Many pro-choicers* do in fact see a moral crisis in aborting a late term fetus that may have the capacity for feeling, but they understand that the law shouldn’t force someone to do ‘the right thing’ when it would effectively destroy their basic human rights.

*Even Amanda Marcotte, scourge of the religious right, sees a moral issue with killing a sentient fetus. It just doesn’t mean that women’s rights can be instantly negated.

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If you’re a man and you’ve had a lover terminate a pregnancy, Greg Hasek is a licensed counselor who knows how to make you suffer.

First, he’ll tell you to draw a picture of what your child would look like today if he hadn’t been killed.
Nothing yet? On goes the sentimental music. Tears in Heaven, maybe.
“Guys can’t withstand it,” Hasek says. You might start to weep.
But if you’re still not feeling it (or as Hasek would put it, “still in denial” about the abortion’s impact), he might take you to a playground and tell you to imagine how old your child would be, how he might run around and play with the other kids - if he were here.

The non-medical term for this is ‘messing with your head’; the medical one is malpractice. Therapists like Hasek (who happens to be the executive director of an Oregon clinic) are in a position of power and trust in relation to their clients, and when they coerce feelings of loss, they can easily make them a reality.

And this is how you create a “Post-Abortion Syndrome” man to rally for your cause: you create the image of a wonderful (born) son or daughter, you encourage the man to feel connected and entitled to it, and then you convince him that he’s “lost” this imaginary child. In other words, you use your psychological expertise to create an unquenchable desire for something that has never and can’t ever exist. Men like Hasek have formed a profession around cultivating pain under the guise of “healing.”

This isn’t anything new, of course - “post-abortive” counselors working with pro-life organizations have been using similar tactics for years to turn shaken women into self-proclaimed repentant murderers. But getting your significant other to regret your abortion is a relatively new trick. Let’s hope these people never hook up with the Dog Whisperer; they might be able to get your poodle to regret your abortion, too.

And a whiny winger baby - but mostly just an idiot.

When liberals are given the choice between acting decently or choosing the riches of perversion - liberals prefer perversion. And if protecting the honor, privacy, and even nakedness of vulnerable women and children is juxtaposed to say the slightest possibility that someone’s right to practice perversion might be curbed - liberals will come running to the aid of the pervert. In fact liberals will go so far to protect perversion that they will actually enlist the use of potential victims to make the case, consequences to the unsuspecting females be damned!

They will say it with a lawsuit. They will say it in print. They will even brag about it in mass media.

Liberals at their core have no sense of true north. They can’t determine right from wrong, good from evil, and in this case even help from hurt. Worse yet - they don’t care. The hardness of their hearts towards the victim is not only apparent in their actions, but the mockery of their words adds insult to injury.

Yes, that’s me - the unsuspecting female enlisted by the vast liberal agenda. Woe is me! Too bad I don’t have a real dragon-fighter like Kevin to chain me to his kitchen (to protect me from the super-scary world, don’tcha know).

Hence why Geraldo Rivera would defend the concealing of an illegal alien’s identity from the feds - even though he had been indicted on 31 counts of child rape, before executing three college kids in Newark this summer.

Okay, Kev, now let’s have a look at what was really said:

TANCREDO: And those are the ones we are concentrating on today, because, of course, the people who are dead today, the three children who are dead in Newark, and the one that’s in the hospital, they are in those conditions, they are dead kids and one in the hospital because Newark is a sanctuary city.

Because Newark did not do what it should have done, did not report the fact that they had in custody somebody who had committed previous crimes and was an illegal alien, and let that guy back out on the street. And he committed these crimes.

COLMES: Geraldo, is that a fair criticism of the city, when you’ve got illegal immigrants — you’ve got people all over the country committing crimes. And there’s a bigger, higher crime rate among people who are here legally than illegal immigrants.

RIVERA: Two points. First of all, this was the 60th homicide in Newark this year, and I’m sure Congressman Tancredo has not opined about any of the other homicides, and only became interested in this one when it became clear that one of the six alleged perpetrators came to this country illegally at the age of 11. That’s one thing.

Number two, why was this person, this one of the six around to commit this hideous crime? He was out because he had a 31-count indictment for the rape of a child, and he was out on $15,000 bail, instead of the requisite $450,000 bail that he never could have made and never would have been on the street.

It had nothing to do with his immigration status. And it’s just being used by advocates of this crushing anti-immigration policy to make a cheap political point.

And you want to know something REALLY interesting, Kev? Tom Tancredo would have preferred for this monster to be deported rather than tried for his crimes here in the United States, where he almost certainly would be put away for life. I can’t help but wonder how many non-American children would be put at risk by setting him loose in another country. For all your blather about how we liberals don’t care about victims, I suppose foreign children aren’t worth a shit in your book.

Or how about the pregnant woman who was deported after her roommates (and possibly her ex-husband) beat her up? As Sheelzebub posted at Pandagon, “This is a dirty little secret – abusers will hold the citizenship status of their partners over their heads. Report the abuse, go to jail. Lose your kids. Get deported.”

That’s the other side of the coin when you start making deportation the top priority - women and children will suffer. I suppose brown victims don’t matter to you, Kevin.

It also explains the actions this week of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

If you have ever dreamed of taking that fabulous shopping trip to New York City, you’d be advised to stay away. Because right now, this very minute, today…there is no law protecting the women you cherish in the dressing rooms of New York City boutiques, shops, department stores or even their hotel showers or bathrooms.

See if the owner of the hotel, the proprietor of the lingerie boutique, or the manager of any of the major shopping hot spots in Manhattan decided he wanted to drill a hole that allowed prurient viewing of your wife, fiancé, mother, sister, daughter or niece - in a space they would otherwise have reasonable expectations of privacy in - then he could do it, just for kicks, and there is no legal recourse you can take in response.

As long as there is no camera involved they can spy on your lovely’s lovelies and you can’t say “boo” about it.

And here, Kev, is where you COULD have come across as a decent human being. No woman wants to be peeped on against her will, and she has every right to her privacy. It wouldn’t have been difficult for you to say so. But your article doesn’t even address women and their personal privacy concerns, it addresses MEN and their concern that someone might be looking at THEIR women. It’s like you’re not even trying not to be a patriarchal asshat.

This is why one lone city councilman is desperately attempting to change the law.

Peter Vallone Jr. had been receiving complaints in his Queens district office for a number of weeks about a pervert who had been ordering a bagel and coffee every morning and then parking himself directly under the train platform vent for the N-line subway. This particular perve had a thing for looking up women’s skirts and he found it amusing to calmly eat his breakfast while stretching his neck to peep. Vallone’s own staffers even complained as the place the man like to do his viewing from was literally steps from the councilman’s front door.

Vallone began to research the matter and discovered that the man was breaking no known law in New York. Incredulous at this dismaying fact the councilman drafted a resolution that would punish such behavior. As the New York Times put it:

The bill would make it illegal to look at a person’s “sexual or other intimate parts, in other than a casual or cursory manner, for the purpose of entertainment, sexual arousal or gratification, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing the person being viewed.”

Pretty straight forward right?

Not according to liberals.

Straight-forward? Actually, that’s a pretty damn vague bill you’ve got there. You can’t possibly enforce a law against looking at someone ‘the wrong way’ as you go about your business. A specific law against intentionally peeping on individuals in dressing rooms and bathrooms without their knowledge or consent is one thing - this is in a whole different league.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (directly associated with the ACLU) issued a statement on Thursday calling the proposed legislation, “creepy lawmaking.”

Liberal radio talk show host Ron Kuby mocked Vallone for drafting the legislation. Kuby is also a slip-and-fall/criminal defense attorney. With great bravado Kuby bullied the councilman in the few minutes they had on-air together, and then went on to brag about all the money he would win from clients for the misapplication he potentially sees from such a law being passed.

Donna Liebermann the NYCLU’s executive director (and reportedly a female) added her own sentiments saying, “The problem with this legislation is that it’s trying to get at this amorphous, vague behavior of looking, which is very imprecise. The language of the bill reflects how vague the activity that they’re trying to get at is, and the problem is that it’s an invitation to abuse, to selective enforcement based on the whims or prejudice of the individual police officer.” Adding, “What kind of a look is degrading, and therefore unlawful, who’s to say?”

Well Donna, any woman who’s ever been the slightest bit attractive could tell you.

They get degrading looks, mental undressings, and even unwanted physical contact from creeps in society daily.

It’s only “imprecise” if no one desires justice or decency for the privacy of women and children. And it is impossible for it to be an invitation to abuse if men have their heads faced forward, and would perhaps bother to look women in the eyes. (Maybe Donna shops in New Jersey.)

Degrading looks? Mental undressings? I get looks from men I’m not interested in all the time, but that doesn’t mean I can call it in and send them to jail for three months. Sorry, Kev, but our country doesn’t put people away for thinking dirty thoughts. Physical contact is absolutely incomparable, and I can guarantee you there are laws in the state of New York explicitly against unwanted touching.

And let’s not beat around the bush, Kevin; we both know that this type of law would be selectively enforced on minorities. Hell, you couldn’t even get four paragraphs into this article without making mention of an absolutely irrelevant immigrant criminal. If so much as lowering your head below eye-level is a crime, everyone is guilty - but you and I both know who will actually suffer the consequences.

So while liberals pledge to get rich while killing this bill, and labeling it “creepy lawmaking,” they have given us a supreme glimpse - a window to their soul if you will…

Liberals will profit mightily by giving aid to perverts, pandering to peeping toms, and giving sanctuary to 31 count indictees of child rape/executioners.

They will do this as opposed to protecting the privacy of their own girlfriend, fiancé, wife, mother, or daughters.

And when necessary they will even brainwash women to make the case for them.

So which is more “creepy” - banning the perverts or defending them?

Have we really arrived at the day in which we have to ask such questions?

Again, females can’t arrive at their own conclusions. They’re just the brainwashed little ladies.

Kevin, I don’t think anyone could give me a look more ‘degrading’ than this drivel you’ve just spat up. Maybe you and Vallone could draft some legislation to protect us from your own bullshit?

For all the proud American flags and boisterous bumper stickers, I don’t think the religious right gets it.

Like when they suggest that marrying someone of the same sex is tantamount to marrying a corpse or animal.

Or when they insist that allowing terminally ill patients the option of choosing their own death is the same as government-sponsored genocide of “unworthy” groups.

Or, for that matter, when they suggest that the life of a zygote, embryo, or fetus with no conscious brain activity is equal to that of a sentient woman.

Someone, please tell me - where is the disconnect here? Why does consent mean absolutely nothing to these people? Why is human will and pursuit of happiness absolutely valueless?

How can anyone be so thick as to suggest that marriage is anything less than a deep commitment and a legal union, one that anyone in their right mind would recognize cannot be consented to by lifeless bodies and/or animals? Honestly. It’s a whole new realm of stupid. Even the most dimwitted of the Republican tribe should be able to comprehend that when you take one “I do,” out of a marriage, you don’t have one.

Advocating for the right to choose life and death on our own terms is about as far from advocating murder or genocide as you can get. And hey, even the occasional freeper gets it:

Freeper 1:

You have always had the ability to make that decision - if you really want to head out of here, you can breathe into a plastic bag that’s over your head, swim too far out to be able to return, shoot yourself, OD on any number of drugs.

Freeper 2:

You can do all of those things with a healthy body. The miserably dying who would want to end their pain often can’t do anything but lay in bed crapping themselves and pressing the morphine button harder.

For those who can do it themselves, brains and hair all over the wall and a closed casket funeral aren’t a very kind thing to do to their friends and survivors.

You certainly have a point with the slippery slope from choice to die to obligation to die, but as far as I’m concerned the obligation to suffer is worse.

What breaks my heart most of all is the Catholic stance against Amnesty International’s new policy advocating abortion access for rape victims in regions like Darfur.

One survivor’s testimonial:

“After six days some of the girls were released. But the others, as young as eight years old were kept there. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me.”

Another woman -

“Women will not tell you easily if they have been raped. In our culture, it is a shame. Women hide this in their hearts so that men don’t hear about it.”

From an Amnesty International press release (emphasis mine):

Women who have become pregnant as a result of rape are most likely to suffer further abuses of their rights. There is the trauma of the rape itself as well as the difficulties associated with carrying and caring with a child who is the result of violence. In the specific social context of Darfur, in a society where rape is considered a taboo and a shame for the survivor of this violence, the child who is a result of rape will mostly be considered as a child of the “enemy”, a “Janjawid child”. Survivors of rape and their children are most likely to be ostracized by their community and married women most likely to be rejected by their husbands. Women may feel forced to abandon the child who is a result of rape and face another traumatic decision to make.

The communities of the women raped do not seem ready to accept the need to provide their full support for these women and possibly the child who could result from such violation. In group and face-to-face interviews conducted by Amnesty International in May 2004, women and men said that while they would accept raped women back into the community, the child as a potential result of rape would not be accepted. This leads women who have become pregnant as a result of rape to a situation of further ostracism, trauma and abuses of their rights. The lack of medical and psychological care facilities to deal with survivors of rape in the refugee camps in Chad and the many more victims in the IDP settlements in Darfur further compounds this situation.

For many men in the refugee camps the human rights violation of rape seems to directly translate into a humiliation against themselves and the group they belong to.

This is addition to the psychological trauma of carrying a “Janjawid child” as the result of being brutally raped. This is in addition to the dangers of childbirth, many of which are exacerbated in abused rape victims.

The Catholic community doesn’t live in some lovely fantasy world where women and children don’t suffer or die from rape and its consequences. They just don’t care. The message is this: when you become pregnant, your most basic needs become irrelevant.

As Mindelle Jacobs wrote in her comment to the Edmonton Sun, “Zygotes matter. Women don’t.”

They just don’t get it.

One of the facets of pro-life argument that I absolutely CANNOT stand is the idea that we poor, mentally-unstable females must be kept from abortion for our own good. Whenever I hear it, I get the distinct mental image of someone gently stroking a nervous cat before casually offering it a bowl of antifreeze. The pro-life establishment has never been interested in upholding women’s welfare, and when it given the opportunity, it will make every effort to endanger women who would dare go against its wishes.

For example, Tom Minnery (Vice President of Focus on the Family) on the “Partial-Birth Abortion” ban:

“The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

Yes, Minnery applauds the fact that women will be endangered by the legislation his organization fought tooth and nail for. Tell women you have their best interests at heart, then push politics to make their medical care as risky as possible. Groups like Focus on the Family love to point out how dangerous abortion supposedly is, but it’s not every day that they publicly pat themselves on the back for doing their part to make it that way. Fortunately for pro-lifers, they often don’t have to bother with using the political system to force doctors to perform more dangerous procedures. Spreading lies and misinformation about current abortion techniques usually suffices. Rachel at Women’s Health News has a wonderful informative post that debunks the recent pro-life myth that medical abortions induced with RU-486 are killing women “at an alarming rate” and cause infertility and miscarriages.

The plain and simple statistical fact that pro-lifers NEVER admit is that women are exponentially more likely to die from childbirth than from abortion. But while anti-abortion advocates try to use the inherent risks of abortion to criminalize it, pro-choicers trust women to weigh the risks themselves and make their own decisions. None of us will try to limit births simply because they can be dangerous. The idea of it sounds ludicrous, but then, so should the idea of limiting women’s reproductive freedoms for their own good.

Amnesty International is reaffirming its stand in favor of abortion access for victims of rape, sexual assault, and incest, and in cases when pregnancy poses a risk to their lives or a “grave risk” to their health. The policy change (Amnesty previously called itself “neutral” on abortion - it opposed forced abortions, but neither attacked nor supported voluntary abortion) was inspired by regions like Darfur, where rape is being used as a weapon of war.

“Amnesty International stands alongside the victims and survivors of human rights violations. Our policy reflects our obligation of solidarity as a human rights movement with, for example, the rape survivor in Darfur who, because she is left pregnant as a result of the enemy, is further ostracised [sic] by her community,” said Kate Gilmore (Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International).

Amnesty International is still far from acknowledging the right to abortion as fundamental in defending each individual’s bodily integrity, but it’s taken a huge step in the right direction. Countless victims will finally have all of their options open to them. Amnesty is also calling for an end to the criminalization of abortion “to ensure women have access to heath care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion … when their health or human rights are in danger.”

Ratzinger is not a happy Pope:

The church, which considers abortion to be murder and never justified, has urged Catholic organizations to withdraw their support for
Amnesty over the policy. The Vatican says Amnesty has “betrayed its mission.”

If forcing pregnancy on battered, assaulted women so they cannot return to their communities is “the mission,” then it’s about time it was betrayed. If sentencing innocent women to death by keeping abortion out of reach for those in risk is “the mission,” then we need to drop the damn mission. It’s just tragic that religious leaders are so desperate to keep victims of human rights violations in the dark.

Classy. A Texas church retracts its offer to hold a memorial service for a Navy veteran after discovering that he was, in fact, gay:

It seems incredible that no one at Arlington’s High Point Church saw the obvious: that Cecil Sinclair, a dying 46-year-old Desert Storm veteran awaiting a heart transplant, was gay.

The church had reached out to Sinclair in his illness because his brother was a janitor and a church congregant. While Sinclair was in the hospital, High Point’s audio-visual minister met Sinclair’s life partner. When Sinclair died, church officials knew the Turtle Creek Chorale, a gay men’s chorus, had been asked to sing at the funeral.

But it was only after Sinclair’s obituary ran that Pastor Gary Simons clumsily canceled a memorial service it had offered for Sinclair — the day before it was to take place.

Simons’ leadership was graceless, but High Point is a private institution and is entitled to reject whom it wants to.

As Sinclair’s partner Paul Wagner, a Desert Storm veteran and a member of the armed forces for 16 years, put it, “I have fought for their right to hate me.”

Appalled?

Later, Simons told the Dallas Morning News that the situation was comparable to a congregation member losing a son who was a thief or murderer. High Point might offer a service, Simons said. “But I don’t think the mother would submit photos of her son murdering someone.”

You simply cannot honor a person’s memory if you look upon the life they had with their loved ones with the same disgust normal people would attribute to murder.