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Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Planned Parenthood Opposes Women's Right to Choose...an Ultrasound
What does ultrasound equipment mean to you?
If you answered, "machines [that] represent missed or messed-up priorities," congratulations! You are qualified to be Planned Parenthood's SaveRoe.com blogger.
The anonymous blogger, whom I call Ms. Curettage, lets loose today with a broadside against Focus on the Family's plan to spend $4 million in private money on ultrasound equipment for crisis-pregnancy centers.
That's private money, mind you. Not like the $265.2 million that Planned Parenthood received from American taxpayers in fiscal 2004 (as per its annual report).
Ms. Curettage notes, "Focus on the Family is placing 150 ultrasound machines in 'crisis-pregnancy centers' around the country this year, with plans to place another 650 machines in the next five years."
Ooh, scare quotes around "crisis-pregnancy centers." The idea of women giving birth to live babies is truly frightening to these people.
She continues: These centers already counsel against having an abortion—by describing abortion as dangerous, wrong, and worse. Well, it's certainly "dangerous" for the baby. And if that's not "wrong," then it must be something...worse.Now the facilities will have an air of legitimacy with high-tech equipment that could belie their lack of medical expertise. Let me get this straight:
If you counsel women to kill their babies, you are enshrouded in legitimacy.
If you counsel women to keep their babies—and are licensed to operate equipment that shows them their unborn child—you have a "lack of medical expertise."
Just checking.
Ms. Curettage continues:For women with wanted pregnancies, ultrasound imaging has become a rite of passage, and a new reason to invest in refrigerator magnets. Awww, says Planned Parenthood, look at the stoopid widdle would-be mamas, with their stoopid pictchas of their stoopid widdle blobs of tissue tacked to their jumbo Frigidaires. You just know those hapless happy Pollyannas who are so sickeningly fond of their parasitic clumps of cells all live out in the Midwest somewhere—away from us civilized city people who know better—and behind their fridge doors lurk humongous jars of Costco mayonnaise.For women with unintended or unwanted pregnancies, these machines represent missed or messed-up priorities. Huh?Not the women's, but ours. Well, I'm glad she cleared that up.
But how do ultrasounds represent "missed or messed-up priorities" not only for women with "unwanted" pregnancies, but also with "unintended" ones? Here we see Planned Parenthood's default logic at work: Baby is unintended, ergo baby is unwanted. End of discussion. End of baby.Four million dollars is four million more than the feds currently spend in comprehensive sex education programs. Again, note the logic. Planned Parenthood's official mouthpiece is hereby stating unequivocally that there is no good reason why any money—even private funds, for heaven's sake—should be spent upon encouraging people to keep their children. Then it throws out "comprehensive sexual education" as a red herring—as though a private organization has no moral right to help women whose sex education, "comprehensive" or not, has failed them.Four million dollars could double the income of 160 families making $25,000—giving them something closer to a family-sustaining income. Well, what can one say to this? Obviously, Ms. Curettage's located her computer's calculator function. The reference to a "family-sustaining income" is quite ironic—positioning Planned Parenthood as a sustainer of family. Somehow, I don't think its definition of "sustaining," at least with regard to life, is the same as the dictionary's. But maybe Ms. Curettage hasn't found her computer's dictionary—or else she's taken her curettage knife and hacked it.The investment is focused on the wrong priority, putting one more hurdle in front of women who, for whatever reason, choose abortion, rather than preventing unintended pregnancies and providing more support for families. And so, a woman's entirely voluntary choice to receive an ultrasound becomes, in Planned Parenthood's eyes, a "hurdle." As for the red herring about "support for families," Ms. Curettage is betting her readers won't know that privately funded crisis-pregnancy centers provide more support for young mothers than taxpayer-backed Planned Parenthood ever has.I suppose it's just easier to single out the woman and focus on changing her mind—at any cost. Ms. Curettage, you've got me there.
2:30 AM
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