[Link from DRJ]

Planned Parenthood on Twitter:

Today, the Trump admin is forcing us out of the Title X program — our nation’s program focused on family planning, of which we serve 40% of patients. This is a *direct attack* on Planned Parenthood and on our health and rights, and we will not stand for it. #StandWithPP #ProtectX

Promise kept. Score one for Trump.

— DRJ

[Headlines from DRJ]

Pro-choice billboards erected outside Texas town that declared itself ‘sanctuary city for the unborn’:

Two pro-choice billboards outside a small town in Texas were put up this month after the all-male city council passed an ordinance declaring it a “sanctuary city for the unborn.”

The billboards, funded by abortion rights activists from Austin, read “Abortion is freedom” and include a website that has information on abortion services in Texas and nearby, according to the Washington Post.
***
Jayna Lay, a resident of Waskom, told The Post she supports the ordinance and is unhappy and outside group put the billboard near town. “I think they did it to take a dig at Waskom,” she said. “They send the wrong message in my opinion. ‘Abortion is freedom,’ that’s a messed up phrase. That’s pretty much saying, ‘Kill your children and you’re free.’ That’s crazy to me.”

The billboards are outside Waskom, Texas, a small town located on IH-20 which is a major East-West freeway in Texas. Waskom is known as “The Gateway to Texas” because it is near the Texas-Louisiana state line.

— DRJ

[Headlines from DRJ]

The Post and Courier (May 18, 2019): Frothy Beard Brewing Co. deals with fallout from co-owner’s social media posts on abortion.

Charleston City Paper (May 20, 2019): [Frothy Beard co-owner] Wesley Donehue to leave Frothy Beard Brewing Co. after backlash over social media posts

What did he say, you ask?

This is a taste from the first link:

Wesley Donehue, a political operative who describes himself as a “pro-life and pro-gay rights conservative Republican,” in a now-deleted Facebook post expressed his exasperation with the belief that men shouldn’t control abortion legislation. He wrote, “For the remainder of the day, I am self-identifying as a woman so I can have an opinion on abortion. #liberallogic.”

Plus this from the second link:

Fri. May 17, Frothy Beard issued an apology on Facebook after Donehue posted on Facebook and Twitter, reacting to sentiment that Alabama’s recent abortion ban is a result of not enough women running for office. “We need more women running for office,” Donehue wrote. “Until then, men will and should control legislative bodies.”

— DRJ

[Headline from DRJ]

[UPDATE 5/18/19: KOB has taken down this report but here is a link to the web archive version. My thanks to tmm for the link. — DRJ]

Woman travels from Canada to Albuquerque to get an Abortion:

She said she called at least 60 places all over Canada about abortion services. No one would see her because 24 weeks is considered too far along in the pregnancy.

Meanwhile, in a story Patterico posted on recently, Alabama abortion clinics vow to stay open despite ban.

—- DRJ

[guest post by JVW]

How many of you have seen this recent image bouncing around the Internet? It was apparently created by the deep thinkers at NARAL Pro-Choice America and has been promoted by the DailyKos and Huffington Post among others.

The idea, naturally, is to call attention to the idea that Christian groups who object to covering contraception and/or abortifacients are somehow being hypocritical if they have no objection to also covering Viagra or other erectile dysfunction treatment medication.

I’m going to pull back the curtain here and divulge a hitherto super-secret and never disclosed principle of Catholic theology [did the sarcasm come through enough there?] which explains why covering Viagra is acceptable whereas covering birth control pills is not, and I think this principle is also adopted by other religious groups who follow the same standard:

Viagra is used to facilitate a process which can lead to conception.

Birth control pills are used to prevent conception.

It really is as basic as that, but somehow this simple concept is way beyond the comprehension of the gender politics warriors whose voices dominate public discourse in these matters.

– JVW

In Austin, a teacher gives one of her students the “morning after” pill — and it doesn’t work out so well:

Steinberg, who also was a math teacher at LBJ, gave the pill to a 16-year-old student who was crying in her class about Jan. 26 because she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, [an arrest] affidavit said.

. . . .

The student did not have a prescription for the medication, which is required for females younger than 17, the affidavit said.

The student and her boyfriend then gave Steinberg money for the medication, the affidavit said.

. . . .

Later, the student texted Steinberg and said she was nauseous, light-headed and experiencing back pain, the affidavit said. The student also said she was frightened, the affidavit said.

Steinberg texted back “this was normal, and to take a hot shower and relax,” the affidavit said.

Dr. Steinberg — oh, I mean NON-Dr. Steinberg — has learned her lesson:

Steinberg “expressed anger at (the student), blaming her for getting in trouble,” the affidavit said.

Or not.

Steinberg has been charged with a felony. I say: good. Will abortion advocates agree with me?

Somehow I doubt it. I am thinking this is going to be one of those instances where abortion advocates support an action they would never support in any other context. Normally, rational people say that you don’t give a child prescription medication that could have serious side effects unless you’re a doctor. But abortion advocates will no doubt see this as different: a horrible situation caused by a draconian law, blah blah blah.

The same thing happens with informed consent laws. Want to make a doctor tell his patients what the gall bladder surgery really entails? What the potential risks are? What the patient is truly about to undergo? Excellent. Want to make sure abortion doctors do the same? OH MY GOD YOU CAN’T DO THAT IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL YOU ARE A TROGLODYTE. Is the response.

It’s OK if you’re supporting abortion.

So. Let’s wait and watch to see if this becomes a big story. And if it does, how the pro-abortion crowd (yes, I said it) responds. A new right to have your child’s teacher become a doctor dispensing potentially harmful medication? I bet they’re for it.

RELATED: Or perhaps they are just counting on the Obama administration’s mandate that healthcare plans provide the morning after pill — a requirement that could force religiously-affiliated hospitals to provide medication that they consider to be immoral.

(Accepted Wisdom™ is an occasional feature of this site, highlighting contradictory viewpoints held by the elite.)

It is Accepted Wisdom™ that:

If a woman decides to end her pregnancy, no matter how developed the fetus is, and no matter how frivolous the reasoning, that is her choice, dammit. If she decides to kill an 8-month-old fetus because the birth of the child might personally embarrass her, then how dare you criticize her, mister!

And at the same time:

If a family wants a child, and the baby is born but dies 2 hours into his young life — and the family chooses to bring the boy home to introduce the child to the rest of the family, then bwahahahahahaha. Pro-life freak. Let’s all point and laugh!

Via Hot Air, the lazy blogger’s gold mine of blogging material, comes news that Rick Perry has just changed his mind on abortion in the case of rape or incest. He’s against it:

Perry said the change came after seeing the “Gift of Life” film produced by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He told an audience of Iowans at Clark Electric Co-op in Osceola that he was moved by the story of a woman who introduced the film during a screening earlier this month in Des Moines.

“She said, ‘I am the product of rape.’ And she said ‘my life has worth,’” Perry said of his exchange with the woman. “It was a powerful moment.”…

[Pastor Joshua] Verwers said after the event that he was initially skeptical of Perry’s flip on the position but that the governor’s answer was “too perfect” and “sincere” to have come from anywhere but Perry’s own heart.

Although the natural tendency is to be skeptical, I think it is possible for people to change their minds on even important issues like this late in life. I can also see both sides of this difficult issue, having both met decent people who are the product of rape, and being acutely aware (mostly through my wife’s work) of people who are impregnated after a rape.

Ethically, the case for allowing the woman to choose after she is the victim of a violent crime is, to my way of thinking, clearly much stronger. Something very much akin to self-defense comes into play, and the prospect of the state denying a rape victim access to at least an early-term abortion will make many uncomfortable. On the other hand, I would like for people to have the chance to persuade even a rape victim to keep the baby. I don’t see where such pro-life measures should be prohibited — and they certainly have nothing to do with the Constitution.

Ultimately, Rick Perry’s personal opinion on abortion matters far less than the constitutional views of the justices he would appoint. A Rick Perry justice (or a Mitt Romney justice) would be far more likely to take a proper constitutionalist approach to such matters than, say, a justice appointed by Barack Obama.

CLIMBS ON SOAPBOX: If you care about the Constitution, always, always remember that virtually any Republican candidate will do better on Supreme Court appointments than Obama would.

If you don’t care about the Constitution, of course, then feel free to be petulant and stay home if you don’t get your way in the primaries.

CLIMBS DOWN FROM SOAPBOX . . . BUT KEEPS IT WITHIN REACH

[Guest Post by Lee Stranahan]

(Thanks to Hot Air for the link. Also — Media Matters is on the attack against me — read their response here.)

Media Matters for America is a well funded, well organized and effective truth killing machine. Here are three short films I’ve made in the past few days to expose their techniques.

Yesterday, I did a film showing how Media Matters used deceptive editing techniques on the Fox / Bill Sammon story. This story has been all over the left wing blogosphere – if you haven’t seen the original piece that MMfA did, it’s here. Gotcha journalism at its worst. Here’s my video on it.

The next video shows how Media Matters used the ‘straw man’ fallacy to attempt to discredit the piece published by Lila Rose yesterday on the Mammosham story. As I say in the video, your position on the controversial issue of abortion doesn’t really matter here – Media Matters are contemptible news twisters.

But – who cares? So Media Matters lies. You know that so why does it matter? That’s what my second video is about. It matter because they have influence on the media narrative today and through the effective use of SEO techniques, they are also writing tomorrow’s ‘history book’. Watch and see what I mean.

[Guest post by DRJ]

NRO’s Shannen W. Coffin has a major story that impacts the Kagan confirmation hearings, and PowerLine’s John Hinderaker summarizes it: While working in the Clinton White House, Elena Kagan was apparently responsible for getting the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) — “a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ organization” — to replace its initial statement on partial birth abortion:

[ACOG] “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

With the following statement:

[The partial-birth-abortion procedure] “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Read both links for the details of Kagan’s role in producing the ACOG statement, a role that Hinderaker says could be a “gigantic scientific deception:”

“Unless there is some other interpretation of these documents that does not occur to me, it appears that Elena Kagan participated in a gigantic scientific deception. On behalf of the Clinton White House, she deliberately subverted what was supposed to be an objective scientific process. The ACOG report was certainly seen in that light by the federal courts. Federal Judge Richard Kopf was deeply impressed by the scientific integrity of the report; he wrote:

“Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.

This statement was obviously false. The federal courts were victimized by a gross deception and a perversion of both the scientific process and the judicial process, carried out, the evidence appears to show, by Elena Kagan.”

Hopefully Senator Lindsey Graham and his Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are reading and listening.

— DRJ