Tag Archive for "anti-choice extremism"

Posts Tagged anti-choice extremism

An unwanted American export: invasive anti-choice tactics

Taking a dick move out of the American anti-choicer playbook, protesters at Australian abortion clinics have started filming women as they enter and leave clinic buildings. Doctors have called on police to intervene, but police can’t intervene because the protesters aren’t breaking the law.

Protesters say that the decision to videotape outside clinics isn’t about shaming women, but about protecting themselves. The Age reports:

Tanya O’Brien, of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants group that regularly protests outside abortion clinics, admitted that members of her group were filming outside clinics but said it was for their own protection in case they were attacked or subjected to allegations of wrongdoing.

You know what, Tanya O’Brien of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Louisiana moves to outlaw abortion entirely

Yeah, you read that right. Last Tuesday, the Louisiana Health and Welfare Committee passed, with a 10-2 vote, a bill that would make abortion provision illegal, with exceptions to save the life of the woman, but no exception if the woman was pregnant as the result of rape or incest. HB 645 (formerly known as HB 587), would send doctors who perform abortions in Louisiana to prison for up to 15 years.

The Times-Picayune reports:

The bill would make it a crime to provide an abortion or prescribe drugs with the intent of ending a pregnancy. There would be exceptions for medically necessary abortions, as certified by a physician, but not for cases of rape or incest. The measure also ...

By Lori Adelman • 12 years ago

Steven Tyler, Julia Holcomb, and abortion remorse as political fodder

Anti-choicers are practically drooling over the testimony of Julia Holcomb, Steven Tyler’s ex-girlfriend from her teenage years, who this week is speaking out about her choice to abort after becoming pregnant by Tyler many years ago — and her subsequent remorse and religious awakening.

Complete with a near-death experience, her story is as heartbreaking as it is frustrating, an altogether too-common tale of a teenager’s physical, financial, and emotional vulnerability.

Holcomb describes in painstaking detail the circumstances that led to her situation with Tyler. Her brother died in a car crash, her father was largely absent, she disliked her mother’s new husband, her stepfather, and her sister was also out of the picture.

Enter Tyler.

By Jos Truitt • 13 years ago

FBI file shows history of threats against Dr. Tiller

The Associated Press has received 287 pages of documents from the FBI file about threats to Dr. Tiller’s life after making a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents are heavily redacted and about half the pages in the file remain secret. But they show a decade of harassment and death threats that led to Dr. Tiller’s murder in 2009. Some of the documents may speak to communication between Shelley Shannon, who shot Dr. Tiller in both arms in 1993, and another potential assassin. The documents are full of threats to Dr. Tiller’s life coming from a number of mentally unstable individuals.

I imagine most folks in the reproductive health, rights and justice communities reacted to these documents the same ...

By Jos Truitt • 13 years ago

Operation Rescue sets up shop across the street from Dr. Carhart

From RH Reality Check comes word that Operation Rescue, the extreme anti-choice organization that leads protests against clinics that perform abortions, along with Maryland Coalition for Life, has rented the building across the street from Dr. Carhart’s clinic.

Dr. Leroy Carhart, who recently opened his clinic in Maryland, is one of the only doctors in the US who still performs late term abortions, a list that used to include his friend and colleague Dr. George Tiller. The Germantown clinic is already the target of anti-choice protesters and sidewalk stalkers, and this new move means that’s only going to get worse. From The Washington Post:

Operation Rescue and the Maryland Coalition for Life celebrated their new lease, saying in a statement ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 13 years ago

“Bunnies in a Blender” and other anti-choice videos

The American Life League has released a new video calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood because they abuse animals…oh wait, no, that’s not quite right.

Transcript after the jump.

I was promised this video would have me “seeing red.” But I’m just confused. As a pro-choice person, I don’t believe that abortion–a legal medical procedure that’s an integral part of reproductive health care and a fundamental human right of all women–is all that much like blending bunnies. And as a pro-truth person, I know that Planned Parenthood already doesn’t receive any taxpayer funding to provide abortions. (Despite the fact that they damn well should.) So this whole debate has about as little to do with abortion as it does ...

The American Life League has released a new video calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood because they abuse animals…oh wait, no, that’s not quite right.

Transcript after the jump.

I was promised this video would have me ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 13 years ago

“Bunnies in a Blender” and other anti-choice videos

The American Life League has released a new video calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood because they abuse animals…oh wait, no, that’s not quite right.

Transcript after the jump.

The American Life League has released a new video calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood because they abuse animals…oh wait, no, that’s not quite right.

Transcript after the jump.

I was promised this video would have me ...

By Vanessa • 13 years ago

Memo to anti-choice terrorists: You’re not doing much to decrease abortion rate

While you think it’d be more effective to convince anti-choice extremists who commit acts of terror against abortion clinics that what they’re doing is inherently wrong (because they’re, you know, attempting murder and all), this may be something they’d ponder more closely: Research is showing that these “tactics” may actually be pretty ineffective in decreasing abortion rates.

The authors find that while in the short-run there is a small increase in local fertility (1%), in the longer run women simply travel to other areas in order to have abortions. If this is, in fact, the case, then the overall the effect on abortion rates is negligible, suggesting that this particular form of terrorism is largely ...