Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
Planned Parenthood of AZ announced the good news this morning:
Planned Parenthood Arizona – Flagstaff Health Center In 2011, Planned Parenthood Arizona was forced to stop providing abortion care at a number of our health centers due to legislation that made the provision of this care nearly impossible. Our health center in Flagstaff was one of them.
For the past two and a half years, women living outside of Pima and Maricopa County have encountered miles of travel, days of wages lost, and several nights away from loved ones in order to access this safe and legal medical procedure. These barriers, created by politicians who have no business interfering with a woman’s personal medical decisions, were faced and overcome by many women – but not all.
After ending abortion care at our Flagstaff Health Center in 2011, we are grateful to have the opportunity to bring this care back to the community. The Flagstaff Health Center is once again providing medication abortion.
While this is good news for the women of Northern Arizona, it is important to remember that so many unnecessary barriers continue to exist for women throughout Arizona – barriers that don’t just relate to abortion care, but to important public health services, such as access to factual information about sexual health or contraception.
Of course LifeSiteNews.com, the daily treasure-trove of anti-choice batshittery, responded to this development. Regular contributor Ben Johnson claims that Planned Parenthood in Flagstaff might engage in covering up statutory rape with this ability to administer medication:
In 2002, Life Dynamics had a woman posing as a young minor call the facility, which was then located at Riordan Ranch Street.
“I’ll be 14 next month,” the woman said. “But my boyfriend’s 22. Could he – is he old enough to take care of it and you wouldn’t have to tell anybody?”
The abortion facility worker replied, “Well, we don’t have to inform your parents, no.”
The minor asked again later, “It’s just, we were not wanting anyone to know all about us. Would he have to sign any papers if he was paying for it?”
The worker, who said her name was Melody, responded, “No.”
I’m not sure what Melody was supposed to do here. “Young lady, you hang up this phone right now and call the police!” She treated the girl with respect and answered her questions honestly. Anti-choicers do these stings all the time but never explain what a correct response by clinic workers might be. There likely isn’t one since these are not really sting operations, since they’re not based on reasonable suspicions of unethical abortion clinic activity. They’re fishing expeditions and, as such, will frequently yield “damning” results. They’re a lot like small town police departments conducting spurious traffic stops to shake people down for fines. Plus, the only way that anti-choicers seem to want to help actual rape victims is to force them to carry pregnancies to term.
From the same edition of LifeSiteNews comes another article by the strangely rape-fixated Ben Johnson. He takes the show House of Cards to task for a plotline where a character lies about her abortion being the result of rape for political reasons.
The vice president’s wife, Claire Underwood, (not to be confused with that guy on L.A. Law) admits during an interview with CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield that she has had an abortion.
The stilted language and cardboard caricature of the pro-life movement proves the script was written by Hollywood elites. Instead of asking whether she has had an abortion, Banfield asks, “Did you terminate the pregnancy?”
Underwood (played by Robin Wright) responds with a homilette on the horrors of the pro-life movement. “If I said yes my husband’s political career would be in jeopardy, my faith would be questioned, likely my life would be threatened, but I won’t feel ashamed. Yes, I was pregnant, and yes, I had an abortion,” she says in what is supposed to be a moment of feminist triumph but comes across as further proof that she is an emotional black hole.
In fact, Underwood has had three abortions – two during her teen years and one on the campaign trail, approved by her husband (played by Kevin Spacey). During a commercial break, an adviser tells her that the American people might look askance at her having had three convenience abortions – so she lies on the air instead.
It’s fascinating how Johnson finds this TV character’s lying about rape to be terribly offensive but has no problem with “sting” operations where activists, ahem, lie about being raped.
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