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Tag: planned parenthood

Yet Another Massive Recommended Reading Round-Up

Some of these links are ancient history in blogworld as I collected many of them before the Katrina disaster that still occupies our minds. Nonetheless, food for thought.

Feminism
Feministing has an update on the crazy, spiky anti-rape device in South Africa.

Binky at Bloodless Coup talks about her overwhelmingly positive experiences with Planned Parenthood during her years before private insurance.

Chris is writin’ love songs to Teh Feminists.

Or Are You Happy to See Me? An essay on strip clubs by a young man that probably deserves greater commentary.

Amanda writes on gender-separated classrooms and pedagogy. The comments quickly turn into commentary about gender, and various studies on ADD/ADHD, gender, discipline and medication.

At Raising WEG, Jody writes a wonderfully thoughtful post on having divorced parents and how it has affected her adult life and her parenting.

Happiness and Parenting at Half-Changed World. The author has also started volunteering as a CASA! Which reminds me I need to get in a class to renew my certification.

Pepper writes on the lack of women’s Constitutional rights in Iraq. James Wolcott comments as well.

Ilyka is angry and rightfully so. But should she quit that blog, she will start getting emails from me, goddammit.

Politics: Katrina
At This Is Not Over (fabulous web design by the way), Miss Alli takes a look at the Congressional Research Service’s findings about the response to Katrina and finds them quite telling.

Liza writes on her own hurricane experiences.

Gas prices. Plus cats. See also: Oil Shockwaves.

I finally know why conservatives hates me so much: Katrina was caused by single mothers.

Existence of poor people a surprise, sez Bush. Also: the 3rd World in America.

I am terribly pleased we now have an idea of what Trent Lott’s new front porch will look like.

Why did we donate? Welcome to the new DIY government.

Politics: John Roberts
The Heretik has a round-up on Roberts of his own. Unrelatedly, The Heretik also thinks DSL and the Broad Band would make a great band name. I agree.

Roberts Ain’t So Bad? I had an inclination to think the same, but then I remembered the life appointment, his past briefs, Feminists For Life, and those beady, beady eyes. That’s what I get for napping through the hearings.

Le Mew (with apologies to Shakespeare’s Sister) has several illuminating posts on reproductive rights laws. See Abortion and Federalism, Precedents and Rehnquist’s Webster Gambit, for example, and the less-related but informative The Rehnquist Legacy IIB: How the Memo Matters.

What would a radical Roberts court look like?

Pissed Off Patricia has a few questions for Roberts. So does John Tierney:

If Roe v. Wade were a tree, what kind of tree would it be?

When you were a clerk at the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger was disliked for his pretentiousness. What nickname did the clerks have for him? Burger King?

Does President Bush have a nickname for you yet?

Media Girl looks at the litmus test for so-called liberals. Read, Kos, read.

Politics: Other
At ZMag, the author asks, Are we slipping backwards?

Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibiity, attachment to fictions and false values…, too great an attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism…

From The Mind of the South (1940); its author was the Carolinian journalist W.J. Cash.

Shakespeare’s Sister writes on her hopes and concerns for rebuilding Gary, Indiana.

Jesse has an apt idea for a memorial that might appeal to Michelle Malkin. See other appropriate suggestions in the comments.

Twisty Faster has an idea for handling those in the White House. I can relate.

Dorcasina writes on various experiences regarding race and class in relation to a highly recommended book.

Contemporary comparisons to the Jimmy Carter presidency.

Terrence dissects notions of race, superiority and inferiority. In an old post, Sydney is very tired of white people.

Life
Because Ethan and I have set up bird feeders all around the house to better watch the brown and yellow finches, I felt the disappointment when Shelley’s finches got displaced.

The Drunken Lagomorph sez, “It’s the Arkansas way!” This one had me chortling for hours.

Entertainment
The 1950s pinup lives again at the Toronto Film Festival. “Notorious Bettie Page” is a movie I have to see.

And if you have a low-grade sense of humor like me, you might really like the Ultimate Fart Soundboard.

Precedence and Abortion

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts said Tuesday that the landmark 1973 ruling on abortion was “settled as a precedent of the court” as he was immediately pressed to address the divisive issue on the second day of his confirmation hearings.

“It’s settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis,” the concept that long-settled decisions should be given extra weight, Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee…

“There’s nothing in my personal views based on faith or other sources that would prevent me from applying the precedent of the court faithfully under the principles of stare decisis,” Roberts said.

Stare decisis is Latin for “to stand by a decision” and legally translates into the doctrine that says courts are bound by previous decisions, or precedents, particularly when a case has been decided by a higher court.

Questioned about rights of privacy, the appellate judge cited various amendments of the Constitution that he said protect those rights, and said, “I do think the right to privacy is protected under the Constitution in various ways.”

Specter, a moderate Republican who supports abortion rights, asked if the Roe v. Wade decision was a “super-duper precedent” in light of efforts to overturn it.

Roberts noted that the Supreme Court itself upheld the basics of Roe v. Wade in a 1992 case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

“That, I think, is the decision that any judge in this area would begin with,” Roberts said.

Still not buying it, judge-for-life.

Why, Sandra, why???

I have been away from the internet for a few days, and when I opened my gmail today I was shocked to find a semi-frantic email from my friend Julie about Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation. Why is this important? MoveOn breaks it down:

Below are just a few examples of landmark cases where Scalia or Thomas voted against O’Connor to try to strike down core rights and freedoms. In many cases if they had one more vote they would have succeeded.

Worker’s Rights: Nevada Dep’t of Human Resources v. Hibbs, which protected the right of workers to care for newborn children or gravely ill family members.

Women’s Rights: United States v. Virginia, which allowed women to attend all publicly funded schools. (C’Connor was not on the Court at the time of Roe v. Wade, but has opposed Scalia and Thomas on reproductive freedom issues in such landmark cases as Planned Parenthood v. Casey)

Church and State: Locke v. Davey, which ensured that states could not be required to fund religious training.

Envrionmental Rights: Friends of the Earth , Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., which protected citizens’ rights under the Clean Water Act to sue against the illegal dumping of mercury and other toxins.

Civil Rights: * Dickerson v. U.S., which upheld the “Miranda” guarantee that people accused of crimes are read their rights. * United States v. Fordice, which protected the rights of those still suffering from the effects of state-enforced racial segregation. * Grutter v Bollinger, affirmed the right of state colleges and universities to use affirmative action in their admissions policies.

Civil Liberties:Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which blocked the government from indefinitely detaining American citizens without charges, an attorney, or any basic rights.

Sign the MoveOn letter. Write to your senator. Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize. If the wrong justice is nominated, Roe v. Wade is #1 on the chopping block.

Anti-choicers gone wild

If you’re a high school student in Ohio, be careful around crying people — you might get AIDS from them. At least, that’s what your state’s abstinence-only education curriculum teaches. Ohio abstinence-only “education” programs:

Overstate the failure rates of condom use, blame contraceptives for poor mental health among youths and erroneously suggest that birth control pills will increase a girl’s future chances of infertility.

Misrepresent religious conviction as scientific fact. One program urges teens to “follow God’s plan for purity,” while another recommends books that are religious in nature.

Contain inaccurate or misleading information about the transmission or detection of sexual diseases. One curriculum described HIV as a virus that can remain undetected either by test or physical symptoms for six months to 10 years, when in fact most antibodies are present within two to eight weeks after exposure. The curriculum also suggested incorrectly that HIV can be transmitted through tears and open-mouth kissing.

Is not applicable to gay teens because same-sex marriages are illegal in Ohio.

In other anti-choice craziness, Planned Parenthood of Missouri is being ordered to re-pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in family planning funding because they provide abortions — despite the fact that none of that money paid for abortions or abortion services. It went to programs designed to prevent abortions. That’s anti-choice logic for ya.

Listening to women about abortion

Jennifer Baumgardner writes a fabulous piece in the Fairfield Weekly about a seldom-discussed topic in pro-choice circles: the emotional aftermath of abortion. While I’m frequently disgusted at the right’s attempts to paint abortion as a choice that inevitably involves emotional scarring, depression, and so-called “post-abortive syndrome” (which isn’t recognized by any reputable psychological association), I do believe that it’s important to allow women a wide range of reactions to their own life experiences. The vast majority of women who have abortions report feeling primarily relieved afterwards; the I’m Not Sorry project documents the narratives of women who chose abortion and don’t regret their decision. But life is never as simple as “I’m not sorry” or “I am sorry” and that’s the whole story. Even women who don’t regret their decision can have complex emotions when dealing with their own abortion. And so far, the pro-choice side has been reluctant to take on these complexities.

There are definitely good reasons why many pro-choice groups focus less of the emotional outcomes of abortion: resources are scarce and must be used where they are most needed; legislative and judicial attacks have taken center stage in the abortion issue for the past 30 years; and once the pro-choice side recognizes that abortion is morally and emotionally complex, the anti-choice side throws it back in our faces. The religious right has succeeded in turning the abortion issue into a black-and-white battle over fetal “life” instead of what it really is: a complicated, personal issue that directly affects women’s lives — and our very right to life.

Read More…Read More…

Know your enemy

I read anti-choice blogs, websites and op/eds often. Why? Not just to get mad, but because I think you have to really understand what you’re up against before you can properly counter it.

One thing I always find interesting about the anti-choice movement is their relative success in convincing the general public that stopping abortion is their only concern — when actually, mainstream “pro-life” groups oppose everything from sex education to contraception to invitro fertilization. Anti-choice blogger Dawn Eden writes a telling post about her views on invitro fertilization. For those unfamiliar with Ms. Eden, she was fired from her position as a copy editor at the Murdoch tabloid The New York Post a few months back for injecting her anti-choice views into a news article on IVF. She is ferociously anti-sex (unless you’re married, which she desperately wants to be), and really hates Planned Parenthood for giving out honest information about sex. I read her blog occassionally if I feel like getting pissed off, but generally leave just kind of feeling sorry for her. But this post is particularly interesting, as it further demonstrates that the most extreme anti-choicers (who usually are the ones running the major anti-choice organizations) aren’t just anti-abortion; they’re anti- any reproductive choice, including aiding women in having children.

Luckily, I think the anti-choicers are digging their own graves with their ridiculous opposition to stem cell research, IVF, and birth control. Those issues expose them for who they really are: extremists who only want women to have one choice (marriage and as many babies as God gives). The vast majority of people believe that women and men should have access to birth control and reproductive technology; stem cell research is also gaining a lot of support. So to the anti-choicers, I say, keep at it. And by all means, get louder. You’re only helping us out.

The Battle Over Birth Control

Notice that the fight over women’s health has lurched from a strict focus on abortion to an ever-increasing attack on contraceptives.

Does the pill prevent pregnancy or terminate it? Conservative Christians in my town hand out flyers at the county fair declaring that all forms of birth control are abortive in nature. They are sure to set up a booth directly across from Planned Parenthood’s booth, the one that hands out information on how to be safe if one is to have sex.

Are condoms an effective barrier-method or does AIDS seep through the “tiny holes” in the latex? Our beloved late Pope endorsed the idea that condoms “have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass,” and lovingly passed this information to four continents worth of churches, effectively confusing those who reside in areas of a global pandemic. Some of these are areas in which the greatest contibutor to health aid is Oprah Winfrey and extra funds are spent on coffins because they “never have enough.” Praise the lord.

Is giving teens accurate information about their sexual health, and access to the materials necessary to do so, tacitly urging them to, you know, do it?

As pharmacists are gain support in their refusal to fill birth control prescriptions, the right to this legal medication is usurped by our ability to access it.

“I am deeply concerned that they have gone further than I have ever seen them. This is far past a woman’s right to make decisions regarding abortion to the point now that it’s about their right to make decisions on contraception,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told Salon. Murray and her Senate colleague Hillary Clinton have blocked President Bush’s nominee to head the FDA, Lester Crawford, over his inaction as acting director of the agency to approve the morning-after pill for over-the-counter sale. An FDA advisory committee has given the drug overwhelming support as safe and effective, and Canada approved its nonprescription status last week. Publicly, Crawford says his indecision on the drug has nothing to do with ideology, but privately he told Murray it raises his concerns about “behavior,” apparently alluding to arguments that the pill will encourage promiscuity.

Crawford is clearly concerned about the behavior of rape victims, considering that they are the ones who suffer most from the lack of availablity to not only the medication, but medical centers who will prescribe it. And those harlots probably asked for it.

Opposition to Plan B is just the latest and most visible drive by conservatives to curtail contraception, according to Heather Boonstra of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group for reproductive issues. “There’s a constituency out there that equates all contraception with abortion, and they’re organizing in concerted ways to denigrate it,” she says. That constituency includes a number of social and religious groups, but the one that takes the abortion-contraception connection perhaps the most literally is the American Life League (ALL), one of the largest antiabortion lobbyists. Founded 25 years ago, it claims 300,000 families as members.

“Many forms of so-called contraception work by preventing the implantation of an already created human being, and that kills a baby in the womb, and we consider that to be an early abortion,” says ALL’s vice president, Jim Sedlak. He says ALL’s main mission is to inform women that all hormonal birth control methods and the IUD “are actually causing abortions themselves” and to force manufacturers to put that description prominently on contraceptive labels.

ALL’s STOPP International campaign also seeks to cut government funding for Planned Parenthood, which it believes misinforms women about how contraception works. Sedlak says STOPP has been successful at the city level — closing over 100 clinics around the country in the last 10 years — and is now targeting state funding. He pointed to the Texas Legislature’s recent decision to cut Planned Parenthood’s state funding as one of ALL’s biggest victories. “It’s not as fast as we would like, but we’ll take it, and we believe it will have a snowball effect and that when people understand what they’re doing we’ll be closing clinics even faster.”

ALL’s three-stage action plan against Planned Parenthood is spelled out on their website.

  • Building community-based coalitions of churches and faithful citizens to oppose Planned Parenthood at the grassroots level
  • Training and mobilizing people to expel Planned Parenthood from their local schools
  • Empowering activists to strip Planned Parenthood’s tax funding at the state level

ALL uses excitable language in order to obscure that while Planned Parenthood advocates for sexual education, they are not literally in the schools. Hell, if you’re a girl in a public school health class, you’re lucky to find out that you bleed.

Where ALL becomes a formidable force is in attempting to bring in coalitions of “churches and faithful citizens.” With the current political climate and three years left under Dubya’s kingly reign, the religious right has nearly effectively hijacked the Republican party. By saying that PP is an organization that “only makes money when our young people are sexually active” obscures the fact that the majority of those who enter the doors of a free clinic are there for routine visits that often have little to do with sex, but with general health issues that go along with having icky ol’ girly bits.

ALL is not the only threat to Planned Parenthood’s funding. In every one of his budgets, Bush has frozen funds for Title X, the 30-year-old program that pays for family-planning services for low-income women. Susanne Martinez, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for public policy, says that although Congress has restored some of that money, this “assault on family planning” has crippled Planned Parenthood’s contraceptive distribution — about 95 percent of the Title X funds it receives go directly to that service. She is also concerned Bush has appointed to agencies like the FDA and Health and Human Services “people who have very publicly said they opposed the use of birth control for the unmarried. It’s something [Bush] has been doing in a very strategic way.”

Several other groups support ALL’s views and its mission. The Family Research Council joined Republican leaders last Sunday on a national telecast blasting the Democrats for blocking appointments of conservative judges who could decide key reproductive-rights issues. And while the conservative Concerned Women for America (CFA) says it does not take a position on contraception, it does oppose abortion and has been vigorously defending the recent drive by anti-choice pharmacists to stop distributing emergency contraception, which CFA considers an “abortion pill.”

I personally am a big fan of ALL’s Rock for Life campaign, because teens are stupid enough to buy any message packaged in the Xtreme. Look, there are free downloads! And a blog!

This may be the final proof that rock n’ roll is indeed dead.

But back to the behavioral business again, the kind of business that shows that abstinence-only programs were ordered to be rated by the CDC on attendance, not effectiveness:

The abstinence-only programs — which have largely replaced safe-sex education — have not only curbed the distribution of condoms and birth control pills in school health clinics, but have entirely banned information about contraceptives and sexual health. The nonprofit Abstinence Clearinghouse, which promotes such programs, says few could argue that refraining from sex is the only sure-fire way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. And it dismisses repeated studies finding that abstinence-only programs are ineffective in either delaying sexual experience among teens or protecting them from disease. So does Alma Golden, Bush’s pick to head the Population Affairs department, which runs the programs. “One thing is very clear for our children, abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs and preventing pregnancy and the emotional, social and educational consequences of teen sexual activity,” she says on the Clearinghouse’s Web site.

Read that again. Abstinence-only programs “have largely replaced safe-sex education.” It makes my hair curl.

It seems as well that there is federal talk of moving abstinence-only programs into elementary schools, thereby exposing yet another hypocrisy in the fight against doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it well, safe, and healthy, considering that one primary argument against comprehensive sex education is that it exposes children to sexual themes they aren’t ready for. Kansas, in the meantime, is in a legal battle over the existence of Adam’s navel. In the children’s best interest, my ass.

Amanda asks, “If you get pregnant on accident, should you be allowed pain medication during labor? Or is that part of your sentence?” Of course it is. No matter that it takes two to make things go right. If woman should slip up and experience prurient sexual desire, she should be punished.

Welcome to America. Don’t let the sun set on your female behind.

The Hunt Hits Home

There’s a reason many locals rarely read the local paper. Little of great note happens around here that you can’t follow through the internet, and better news coverage of state and local events is done elsewhere. After a year of having a local paper subscription simply for the crossword, I cancelled. One less bill, water off my back.

Echidne of the Snakes reports on more incidences of fishing through OB-GYN medical records looking for cases of child abuse.

Only this time, I saw the name of my town. Looks like I should be paying closer attention to the local news.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana is suing the state after the attorney general’s office seized the medical records of eight juvenile patients, including five from the Lafayette area.

First note: Our local Planned Parenthood, which used to be one of three, now pared down to one in this college and factory town, does not offer abortion services. Unlike the PP Kameron Hurley described at her blog, you can walk directly into the clinic and up to the counter — but your wait is never less than an hour, even with an appointment. Walk-in days are complete hell, and I’ve waited as long as three hours just to get into an examination room. The primary use of our Planned Parenthood is threefold: a place to get nearly free birth control, a place for health screenings and regular checkups, and a place to get referrals to other PPs and specialists across the state.

Now think about this. If our Planned Parenthood does not offer abortion services but the state Attorney General is going after them anyway, this is about more than abortion. Is it necessarily about child abuse? Read on.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis seeks temporary and permanent injunctions against Attorney General Steve Carter and his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit from searching the records of 12- and 13-year-old patients.

The unit, since March 1, has seized records from clinics in Bloomington, Franklin and Lafayette.

“They’re using a pretty intimidating tool and twisting it in an effort to get confidential records,” said Betty Cockrum, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

She said of Carter, “He does not have, under the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the provision to seek the information he is seeking.”

Having come of age during the tail end of the HIV/AIDS PR campaign, a good deal of my friends went on birth control and got regular check ups at Planned Parenthood from the time of menarche. By the ages of 13 and 14, at least half a dozen of my girlfriends were on birth control for various reasons – yes, some of them were sexually active, but others simply wanted a regulatory effect on their monthly period. One girl reluctantly went on birth control after a six-week-long period. Another did it because she knew she would, at some point, be sexually active. Why not start now? she reasoned. Another did so because her family didn’t have insurance, and PP would become her only dependable option for healthcare.

Do any of these factors mean their medical records should have been available for legal scrutiny? Their demographic matches alone would have left them open for this legal hunt by virtue of their age and the venue they used for their health services.

Spokeswoman Staci Schneider of the attorney general’s office said the unit seized the records as part of an ongoing investigation to determine if Planned Parenthood has been reporting instances of child molestation.

Failing to do so constitutes abuse and/or neglect, she said.

“When you have knowledge of potential child abuse or neglect, you’re required to report that. There are standards to live up to … as a Medicaid provider,” Schneider said Monday.

“We’re pursuing because it’s our duty to ensure that Medicaid providers are following the law.”

This assumes that by honoring patient privacy, PP is breaking the law. Read on for more on this.

Unit director Allen K. Pope also has requested the records of 73 other patients at 19 clinics, according to the lawsuit, which names Pope and Carter as defendants.

The unit showed up at the Lafayette clinic, 1016 E. Main St., on March 7, said Cockrum. She said the demand for additional records is a “fishing expedition.”

Cockrum said she has not been told why the attorney general’s office wants the medical records.

Indiana law defines child abuse as sexual activity with someone age 13 or under, including cases in which the partner is also a minor, according to Cockrum’s attorney, Ken Falk of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

Judge Loretta Rush, the juvenile judge in Tippecanoe County, said Monday that she wasn’t aware of the Planned Parenthood lawsuit. But she said the public would be surprised to know the number of Lafayette-area girls, age 13 and under, who become pregnant.

I’ve stood in front of Rush before as a CASA and I trust the woman’s judgement. She does not rush to condemn in even some of the shadiest cases I’ve heard of, and has always struck me as being quite fair.

But it does strike me that the state attorney general did not consult with the only juvenile court judge in the county before looking for medical records of young women who may or may not have been abused in this county. If there is anyone one would want to consult, it is the person who rules on every such case that comes into the system. Further, it surprises me that Rush does not (according to this article) appear to be concerned about the implications of bypassing her professional authority OR the legal implications of dipping into people’s medical records just to make sure.

That the state Attorney General didn’t contact the supreme authority on this county’s figures — but went straight to the Planned Parenthood — tells me this isn’t about child abuse except on a rhetorical level. But because our PP doesn’t provide abortions, something feminist experts have named as a primary reason for this sort of witchhunt across the nation, tells me it isn’t about abortion either.

Then what the hell is it?

“I’ve had more young pregnancy cases come into the juvenile justice system in the past year to 18 months than I’ve had in the last six years total,” Rush said.

Rush, contacted at home Monday evening, couldn’t provide specific numbers, but she said she’s aware of one pregnant 10-year-old, two pregnant 11-year-olds and “several” pregnant 12- and 13-year-olds in recent months.

They come to her attention in a variety of ways, including paternity cases and Child In Need of Services cases if the child is deemed a victim of abuse or neglect.

To my knowledge, none of the girls she mentions in these cases (which do become local news, by the way, especially if the paternal unit is a Hispanic immigrant, adding to a local hysteria that should be addressed in another post altogether) visited a Planned Parenthood. Perhaps they did.

Fullnelson comments:

[This kind of bill] [ed note: especially the kinds seen in Kansas and Missouri] seeks not only to charge teenagers experimenting with sex with “child abuse” (and, if convicted, requiring them to register as sex offenders), but also to make it the responsibility of teachers and health providers to report “substantial evidence of sexual intercourse” (whatever the hell that means!) as child abuse, thus reducing them to the role of panty-sniffing snitches. So if a kid seems to be speaking from personal experience in sex ed. class, the teacher is legally obligated to rat him out as a possible child abuser.

…It appears that this concept of requiring reporting of suspicion of underage sex as child abuse comes straight from the playbook of pro-life groups who accuse Planned Parenthood of “breaking [reporting] laws in order to sell abortions and birth control pills to minors.” [link]

This website is connected to LifeDynamics.com, a group led by Mark Cruthcher, which offers litigation support to attorneys in medical malpractice cases against abortion clinics. They had created this “scandal” about under-reporting of child abuse to go after school districts who failed to report teens who sought birth control information. LifeDyanmics.com also has a direct mail program and disseminates “research” on abortion issues, “designed to help the pro-life side win.”

I have come into contact with Betty Cockrum, CEO of PP of Indiana, several times since I took up the fight to maintain our Planned Parenthood. She puts up a good fight for the organization in a state that would rather have it impaled by crippling bill after crippling bill than offer free and safe medical care for young people, in part because it serves as a convenient pariah for all that is deemed wrong with liberalism by state Republican standards. This case, Planned Parenthood against the Attorney General, will likely serve as a test case. As far as I know, no similar cases have been brought to trial in the state – and I’m not sure many within state lines will see this underhanded attempt at smearing the name of Planned Parenthood, the only medical care that me and mine get for free, as a legal tragedy.

Teen pregnancy, especially at the younger ages, will oftentimes derail the life goals for every party involved. It is sad, it happens, and sometimes it is child abuse. But at no point does the mere suspicion of such become an easy excuse to put legitimate medical providers and an entire generation of youths on surveillance.

Related Reading:
Aufheben, formerly of Indiana, writes “So What’s Wrong With Young People Having Sex?”

UPDATE: The Well-Timed Period looks further into Indiana and comes up with these statistics.

# Total # of pregnancies reported in the 10-14 age group: 196. Lafayette (1 pregnancy).

# Number of births in the 10-14 age group: 131 births (out of 84,839 births).

# Father’s age for the 10-14 age group (most, 102, are listed as unknown).