This version of the necessity defense sounds like something out of Law & Order, but it has been tried before. Paul Jennings Hill, who murdered an abortion doctor and his bodyguard, attempted to use the defense, but was barred from doing so. He was later executed. Clayton Waagner, a domestic terrorist who sent hundreds of envelopes containing fake anthrax to abortion clinics, also tried to advance a necessity defense in his 2003 trial. He too was barred from doing so by a judge, and was convicted of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction. In 1993 and 2007, courts ruled that the necessity defense cannot be used in crimes against abortion providers — and for good reason. The Free Dictionary identifies three main elements of the defense:

(1) the defendant acted to avoid a significant risk of harm; (2) no adequate lawful means could have been used to escape the harm; and (3) the harm avoided was greater than that caused by breaking the law

In the 1993 case, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the "harm avoided" cannot be a legal activity like abortion. Law professor Margaret Raymond says Roeder's case is unlikely to overturn this decision. She explains,

Typically, you don't get to use that defense in murder cases. The problem with a necessity defense in this case is that it is hard to say that something that the law permits is an act that must be prohibited at the cost of death.

Though the defense is unlikely to get him acquitted, or even to be allowed by a judge, Roeder is receiving some support. His public defender seems flummoxed by his choice — he says, "I'm not sure if we've had a parting of our thoughts here or what. We'll have to talk with Scott and see what's going on in his head, I guess" — but Roeder has met with Georgia lawyer Michael Hirsh, an expert in similar defenses. Hirsh hasn't commented on Roeder's case, but he did say in a previous interview,

The fact is that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that shows the humanity of an unborn child. And Dr. Tiller was notorious, by his own designs, for specializing in late-term abortions. So there's no denying by rational people the humanity of an unborn child, and the only difference in the unborn child and you and me is size, age and location.

Roeder's goal may be less to get an acquittal and more to turn his trial into a referendum on abortion. That was Waagner's aim back in 2003. Of that trial, Salon's Frederick Clarkson wrote,

Originally, Waagner wanted to use his trial as an international media stage to put abortion on trial. [...] He was bitterly disappointed that he was not allowed to use the necessity defense, and made a point of getting the judge to reassure him that he could appeal partly on the court's denial. Acting as his own attorney, Waagner tried to raise his issues at every turn.

Dave Leach, who helped organize the short-lived eBay auction to pay Roeder's legal fees, also wants "to put abortion on trial." He says that by admitting to the murder, Roeder has shifted the focus to whether his crime was justified:

In probably all previous cases, the dog-and-pony show proceeded, the prosecutor bringing in his witnesses to prove what nobody seriously contests. That way there is an appearance of a right to trial by jury. The jury gets to weigh the facts, which the defendant does not contest. But I have proposed to Scott that he stipulate to the alleged facts, making the dog-and-pony show irrelevant to any additional information the jury needs to make its determination, and dramatically isolating the necessity defense as the sole contested issue of the case.

He adds,

Legally protecting a harm does not render it harmless. The necessity defense requires reasonable people to judge whether a harm is in fact harmless, regardless of how courts or lawmakers feel about it.

Leach thinks a jury will acquit Roeder, which is almost certainly false. His trial may spark abortion debate, but probably not in the way he wants. Yesterday a group of abortion foes, many of them jailed for crimes against abortion providers, signed a letter arguing that Tiller's murder was justified. Kathy Spillar of the Feminist Majority Foundation responds,

This clearly shows [Roeder's] connection to the most extremist branch of the anti-abortion movement, which has long advocated this defense, that somehow the murder of doctors is justifiable. It's a defense that should not be allowed, but it shows his deep connections. We can only hope that law enforcement is looking into those connections and any possible involvement in the murder of Dr. Tiller.

The more people in the anti-abortion movement stand up to excuse the killing of abortion doctors, the less Roeder looks like a lone gunman. And if, indeed, many in the anti-choice camp condone murder, their claims of compassion and moral uprightness lose credibility. Roeder's defense strategy may well attract attention to the anti-abortion cause — but that attention may be negative.

Murder Suspect Confesses To Killing Abortion Provider [LA Times]
Suspect Admits To Tiller Murder, Will Attempt Necessity Defense [Iowa Independent]
Des Moines Man Hopes To Free Alleged Tiller Assassin With ‘Necessity Defense' [Iowa Independent]
Suspect In George Tiller Murder Confesses; Experts Doubt Defense [Wichita Eagle]
Suspect Confesses To Killing Wichita Abortion Doctor George Tiller [American Chronicle]

Related: The Quiet Fall Of An American Terrorist [Salon]

Greg Sargent reports at least 41 pro-choice Democrats have signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi stating the following:

As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women's access to reproductive health services.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law.

For those of you who (like me, initially) are confused about how this extremely complicated and at times disheartening process works, what happens now is that the Senate needs to pass its own version of the healthcare bill, and then the two houses of Congress must hash out a single version in conference committee. That version needs to be approved by the House and Senate — and 41 House Dems say they won't vote for it unless what Latoya aptly calls the Stupid-Shits Amendment, which would prohibit women who receive government subsidies from buying abortion coverage even with their own money, is removed. As Sargent points out, their language is "unequivocal, with no wiggle room." And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (video above) pledges that the Stupak Amendment will be gone from the bill when it comes back from committee. Sargent says it will be difficult for the letter's signatories to back away from their position now. He explains,

It will be much tougher for pro-choice Dems to cave and support the bill with Stupak than it was for House progressives to cave and back the bill despite its lack of a robust public option.

Here's why: Because the public option had initially been written off for dead, the version liberals did secure allowed them to claim they had won something. By contrast, Stupak is a significant step backward for advocates of abortion rights and women's health issues. So it will be much tougher for pro-choice House Dems to back a final bill with Stupak in the end.

According to Stephanie Condon of CBS, Pelosi can only afford to lose 40 Democratic votes if she wants the health-care bill to pass, so the 41 signatories to the letter constitute a serious threat. Will that threat be enough to convince the conference committee to soften its line on abortion? Will the 41 Democrats actually kill a healthcare reform bill that would — again, as Latoya pointed out — do many good things, if it fails in this one key area? If Stupak stays in, and the Dems cave, would Obama even sign a bill with such severe abortion restrictions? White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was vague on this point, saying only that "I am not going to become a negotiator on Capitol Hill from the podium" and "We will wait to see what health care reform brings." His failure to denounce the amendment does make it seem like Obama might compromise on abortion to push healthcare reform through. The fate of the final bill is still so uncertain, however, that it's hard to begin the upsetting calculus of whether the compromise would be worth it. Only one thing's for sure — as Sargent says, "This will intensify."

Obtained: In Letter To Pelosi, 41 House Dems Pledge To Vote Against Bill With Anti-Abortion Amendment [The Plum Line]
Wasserman-Schultz: We Will Kill Stupak Amendment [The Plum Line]
Health Care Progress Report: November 9 [CBS]
White House Not Opposing Stupak Amendment [Politico]

Earlier: Reproductive Rights Left Behind After Health Care Bill Passes House

The reports from Washington are unambiguous. Health care reform was actually war on Roe:

The House passed its version of health-care legislation Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215 after the approval of an amendment that would sharply restrict the availability of coverage for abortions, which many insurance plans now offer. The amendment goes beyond long-standing prohibitions against public funding for abortions, limiting abortion coverage even for women paying for it without government subsidies.

Wow. I suppose advocating for smaller, less intrusive government ends at womens' wombs.

Obama left the abortion issue unmentioned Sunday when he appeared in the White House Rose Garden to give brief remarks congratulating the House on its "courageous" passage of the bill. "Now it falls on the United States Senate to take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people," he said. "And I'm absolutely confident that they will."

Other issues remain unresolved. The House bill's primary new revenue source to pay for the bill is an income tax surcharge on families earning more than $1 million; the Senate bill will probably rely on a proposed new excise tax on costly insurance plans. The House and Senate also differ on a government-run insurance plan to be offered on the new marketplace where small businesses and people without employer-provided coverage — about 30 million in all — would buy coverage. [...]

The bills also differ in their requirements for employers to provide coverage — the House's language is tougher — and in the subsidies for those who cannot afford coverage, which are larger in the House version. Both bills deny subsidies to illegal immigrants, but the Senate version goes further by also barring them from buying coverage on the new marketplace with their own money.

So, let's recap:

1. No public option
2. We have an exchange that assumes a relative definition of "affordable"
3. Somehow, they managed to work this so that even women who were paying for their own care got conned out of abortion coverage
4. Undocumented workers can't access this plan, even without subsidies, though they - like other human beings - get sick and need treatment like everyone else.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got hosed.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment (which I am highly tempted to rename Stupid-Shits) was considered to be the way to compromise and move the bill forward. Senator Claire McCaskill is trying to hedge on behalf of the allegedly pro-choice Dems who voted for the bill, saying:

the amendment in the House health care reform bill is narrow, barring any insurance plan that is purchased with governments subsidies from covering abortion. The vast majority of Americans would not fall into that category, she said.

Nope. Poor people, you get what you get and you will be grateful.

The right-leaning Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, doesn't mince words:

The House's 11th-hour change to its health bill removes abortion coverage from millions of insurance policies that consumers would get under the legislation, including from private insurers.

Anyone who receives a new government tax credit to buy health insurance couldn't enroll in an insurance plan that covers abortion. A proposed government insurance plan also wouldn't cover the procedure. That's a sharp reversal from the original bill, which included abortion coverage in the public plan and allowed those with a tax credit to enroll in a plan that covers the procedure.

Abortion-rights supporters say the change would likely prevent any insurer who sells policies on the new government insurance exchanges from covering abortions, regardless of whether the purchaser is using a tax credit. [...]

Private plans inside the exchange would still be able to sell policies that cover abortion to anyone who isn't getting a tax credit. But they would have to create a special policy for that group. Insurers may be reluctant to do so because it could complicate how they pool risk and force them to label policies in a way that could draw attention from abortion opponents.

Those who receive an insurance subsidy and want coverage for abortion would need to buy a separate rider policy. "What woman would buy a plan for an unplanned pregnancy?" said Ms. Rubiner of Planned Parenthood. She said only a handful of states currently allow for such a policy.

In addition, NARAL Pro-Choice America is convinced that this amendment doesn't pass the sniff test:

• The Stupak-Pitts amendment forbids any plan offering abortion coverage in the new system from accepting even one subsidized customer. Since more than 80 percent of the participants in the exchange will be subsidized, it seems certain that all health plans will seek and accept these individuals. In other words, the Stupak-Pitts amendment forces plans in the exchange to make a difficult choice: either offer their product to 80 percent of consumers in the marketplace or offer abortion services in their benefits package. It seems clear which choice they will make.
• Stupak-Pitts supporters claim that women who require subsidies to help pay for their insurance plan will have abortion access through the option of purchasing a "rider," but this is a false promise. According to the respected National Women's Law Center, the five states that require a separate rider for abortion coverage, there is no evidence that plans offer these riders. In fact, in North Dakota, which has this policy, the private plan that holds the state's overwhelming share of the health-insurance market (91 percent) does not offer such a rider. Furthermore, the state insurance department has no record of abortion riders from any of the five leading individual insurance plans from at least the past decade. Nothing in this amendment would ensure that rider policies are available or affordable to the more than 80 percent of individuals who will receive federal subsidies in order to help purchase coverage in the new exchange.

On November 6th, before the announcement of Stupak-Pitts, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend published an op-ed in Newsweek, urging Catholic leaders to re-examine their push to end access to abortion through health care reform:

The current House health-care bill expressly prohibits federal funding of abortion and excludes the procedure from the minimum benefits package. It includes provisions that existing state laws and conscience laws will be respected. The House bill makes buying private health coverage affordable by offering tax credits to families with modest incomes. Moreover, the bill proposes a common-sense solution to ensuring that federal funds are not used for paying for abortion. The bill creates a mechanism for segregating private dollars from public funds to ensure that only private dollars go toward abortion coverage. This is a common practice in negotiating the role of religion in the public square. Similarly, Catholic schools receive federal funding for nonreligious services as long as those funds are separated from the school's religious work. If this solution is good enough for Catholic schools, then it is certainly good enough for health-care reform, and it reflects well on the tolerant and pluralistic society we have created. Most importantly, the bill does what the president promised health-care reform would do-it ensures that no one loses benefits they currently have.

Unfortunately, this reasonable approach is under attack from some Roman Catholic bishops who object even to the use of private dollars for women to exercise their conscience. They are determined to make abortion illegal, even if it derails health-care reform entirely-no matter the cost to women and children-and regardless of whether it would actually have any impact on the number of abortions in this country. (In fact, comprehensive health care could well reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and subsequent abortions.) In politics, this is called using abortion as a "wedge" issue. And it's simply not right. It is not right to jeopardize health care for the millions of women and children who need it most by inserting abortion politics into the debate. As a Catholic, I admire the bishops for their dedication to social justice, but cannot understand why they would put the health of so many women and children at risk when there is not a single federal dollar being spent on abortion services. It's a view I believe many of my fellow Catholics share. I urge the bishops to recognize that the House bill contains a familiar and genuinely American solution to the challenge of weighing differing religious beliefs in the realm of public policy.

As I've said before, I consider myself "pro-conscience." Women do not make the decision to have an abortion lightly, but it is absolutely critical that they have the means to make this decision and access to the care they need, no matter what their choice. Anything less would be turning the clock back on the progress we have made on advancing women's health.

It isn't just the Catholics on this one, but I'll heartily cosign Kennedy Townsend's pragmatic, women-focused take on health care. Reducing or removing access to abortion is not an effective strategy because it doesn't work - as we've written about before, it just makes the stakes higher.

While I'm sucking on the bitter pomegranate seeds of disappointment, I will try to look on the health care bright side. For one thing, the Republicans from Louisiana are an interesting bunch to watch:

So on Saturday, [Republican Anh "Joseph"] Cao, the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress, surprised Democrats and Republicans by becoming the only one of the 177 House Republicans to support the health-care bill.

"I felt last night's decision was the right decision for my district, even though it was not the popular decision for my party," Cao told CNN on Sunday.

The decision, he said, was a lifeline to the poor and uninsured in his district, rejecting the idea that it had anything to do with reelection hopes. Members of both parties privately said, however, that Cao's prospects are doomed unless a large number of Democrats in his district embrace him. [...]

"I know that voting against the health-care bill will probably be the death of my political career," Cao told the Times-Picayune this year. But he added: "I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, 'How does it profit a man's life to gain the world but to lose his soul?' ''

(The bitter seeds also compel me to mention that Cao waited until the Dems had a majority and then decided to cast his vote. He also made abortion restrictions a provision of his aisle crossing.)

Bipartisanship doesn't seem like so much fun anymore. As Paul Begala points out at the Daily Beast:

Obviously, passing major laws with bipartisan support is preferable. But not always. Twenty-eight House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats voted for the Bush tax cut in 2001. Coupled with the 2003 Bush tax cuts, which also had some Democratic support, that vote ran up $2.5 trillion in debt. And for what? They didn't create jobs or reduce poverty or raise incomes for the middle class. In fact, median income fell by about $2,000 per family. Sure, the Bush tax cuts were bipartisan. But they were disastrous policy.

So, a good thing is that bipartisanship will hopefully be used in service of the greater good for all, instead of just a nice term to trot out at press conferences.

And Ann at Feministing points out things we should love about the bill, once we finish seething over the amendment:

*Expands Medicaid "to reach a wider range of poor households up to 150% of the federal poverty level.
36M additional Americans will now be eligible for Medicaid."

*Bars discrimination in health care on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

*Acknowledges LGBTQ Americans are a population likely to "experience significant gaps in disease, health outcomes, or access to health care." This will hopefully ensure that LGBTQ people are included in future data collection, and that grant programs will focus on their specific health needs.

*Ends the "unfair practice of taxing employer-provided domestic partner health benefits, allowing thousands upon thousands of LGBT people to obtain domestic partner health benefits for their partners and families without having to pay a tax penalty through the nose."

*Allows states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs. (Currently, states are only allowed to use Medicaid money for patients with full-blown AIDS.)

*Funds comprehensive sex-ed programs.

So there are some silver linings to this storm cloud but I'm beginning to wonder - even with the good additions - if we should have left fucked up enough alone.

Abortion an obstacle to health-care bill [Washington Post]
McCaskill: Abortion amendment no poison pill [Politico]
Late Change Drops Abortion Coverage [Wall Street Journal]
House: Yes to Extreme Anti-Choice Politics, No to Women's Health and Privacy [NARAL]
A Call to Catholics [Newsweek]
A vote to make or break a career [Washington Post]
Forget Bipartisanship [The Daily Beast]
Good news in the health care bill [Feministing]
39 Democrats voted against the Affordable Health Care for America Act #HCR [Culture Kitchen]

Earlier:

NYT: Filipinos Fight For Reproductive Justice

According to the Associated Press, "the amendment also prevents private insurers from covering abortions for anyone getting federal subsidies to help pay their premiums." [AP]

Worried about the passage of the health care bill and unable to pull the party together over the abortion issue, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders decided to allow a vote on an amendment introduced by anti-choice Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan that would, according to Congressional sources who spoke to The Washington Post, "prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services. It also would block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions," if passed.

Democratic leaders hope that the move will help them being anti-choice Democrats and Republicans (Republican Rep. Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania is also a sponsor of Stupak's amendment) on board so that they can ultimately pass the health care bill itself, but the move is not a popular one with many pro-choice Democrats, including Rep. Diana Degette of Colorado, who tells the Wall Street Journal: "If you say the public option cannot be used for a medical procedure, you are greatly restricting a choice compared to current law. That is not acceptable to me."

House Holds Rules Debate On Health-Care Legislation [WashingtonPost]
Abortion Fight Erupts In Health Care Debate [NYTimes]
House Starts Debate On Health Bill [WSJ]

I'll be honest — I'm always extremely uncomfortable when I see children at anti-abortion protests, and these videos provoked an even stronger reaction. In twelve-year-old Anthony Matzke's film above, and in this song by an eleven-year-old girl, children tell the stories of their mothers' decision not to abort them. While I don't think the kids themselves are trying to manipulate viewers, the films come off as a bit disingenuous — "look at this cute, earnest child," they seem to be saying, "who almost got aborted." And as much as it makes me angry when an adult tries to tell me what to do with my body, it's even more disturbing when a kid — someone who has no experience making reproductive decisions — does so. Finally, I'm concerned that these kids, especially the ones in the "12 and younger" category, don't yet have the experience or wisdom to evaluate the positions they're supporting — some of them haven't yet learned how to spell the words in their arguments.

At the same time, I'm not sure how I'd react if this were a pro-choice film contest. When young girls express feminist views, I usually think they're awesome — I don't shake my head and say they're too young to understand equality. Of course, some issues are more complex than others, and while even very young girls may have faced gender discrimination, I think it's harder for the average 11-year-old to have a full understanding of the issues surrounding pregnancy (the teens who entered the competition may understand these issues better). There's also a problem with the films themselves, which in some cases seem chosen for shock value. "Choices," the winner in the 13- to 18-year-olds' category, centers on disturbing photograph of a stillborn child, on which the camera lingers. The message is that because this child's death was a tragedy for his family, all abortion is also a tragedy. It's not a fair argument — the right to choose doesn't devalue the pain of women who have chosen pregnancy and then faced a child's death. But as with so many anti-abortion protests, the images make clear that "Choices" is an appeal to emotion, not reason.

There's a pretty big part of me that recoils from the whole contest simply because I don't agree with its premise. But I also hope that all the young winners are growing up in environments where they're allowed to come to their own conclusions. I hope that these films were their idea and theirs alone, and that they come from homes where they can change their minds if they want to. The whole thing reminded me a little of a conversation I had with my brother and an older cousin when my brother was about seven years old. He asked my cousin what a "conservative" was. The response: "a conservative is a bad person." At 12, I didn't really like conservatives either, but I also didn't like to hear my little brother being told what to think. I took him aside and tried to give him a more nuanced explanation of the right and left in American politics (although it probably wasn't that nuanced, since I was in sixth grade). Since then, I haven't always been so open-minded, and my now-grown brother sometimes has to call me out for demonizing people (most often, people who don't agree with me) without knowing enough about them. I hope the kids who entered the Pro-Life Film Contest have someone to do this for them.

Lia's Challenge: Pro-Life Film Contest Winners [Susan B. Anthony List]

[Washington, D.C., November 5. Image via Getty]

WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 05: Anti-abortion demonstrator Diana Roccograndi of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, wear a paper mask of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) while protesting outside the Cannon House Office Building November 5, 2009 in Washington, DC. The protesters were voicing their opposition to Congress' health care reform legislation, saying it supports government funding of abortion. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The reader, who asked that we keep her anonymous, wrote (link ours):

I read your story and I live in College Station. I had an abortion at the Bryan Planned Parenthood location in July and she was my "counselor"....meaning she took me in the little office, I told her I was pregnant and wanted an abortion and she helped me pick which method (the pill...I was about 4.5 weeks) and schedule my appointment. This PP only does abortions on Saturdays with a doctor that comes in from Houston. She was there both the Saturday I was given the pill and the next Saturday when I had to come in for my follow-up ultrasound, so I'm not exactly sure how she could have thought an abortion meant you were going to shit rainbows. I can honestly say I am completely shocked. I was 21 and an atheist, and I didn't have any moral conflict about what I was going to do and I told her that. She was very understanding and matter-of-fact. I even started to cry (mostly because I was worried about what my boyfriend would say) and she comforted me. Her office was covered in pro-choice bumper stickers and buttons, and she didn't push the issue when she asked if I wanted to know about alternative choices. I also saw year about two years ago for birth control, so she has at least been there that long.

The most striking part of the e-mail is its mention of ultrasound — Johnson said she changed her position on pregnancy termination after seeing such an ultrasound, but our tipster isn't the only one to point out that this sounds a little implausible. Writing at Double X, Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte says,

Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey! abortion removes a fetus from your uterus. [...] After all, your average person in the United States has seen probably hundreds of sonograms in their lives, and most of them show a fetus at gestational age well beyond the point that most women get elective abortions. If you compare the ultrasound taken prior to an elective abortion, the feeling is actually one of being underwhelmed, because there's not much there compared to the ones we're used to seeing. The anti-choice sentimental devices rely therefore on ignorance more than illumination-their own mistaken understanding of what goes on in an abortion clinic.

While the story Johnson is now telling does seem like a well-crafted anti-abortion fable, it doesn't ultimately matter so much what caused Johnson to change her mind about reproductive rights (though it is worthwhile to note, as Broadsheet's Lynn Harris does, that many women change their minds in the other direction every day). What does matter is whether she's now slandering Planned Parenthood. Marcotte thinks she may be. She writes, "Johnson's accusation-that her branch was trying to discourage contraception to up the number of abortions-fits into a long-standing, demonstrably false anti-choice myth about Planned Parenthood, which is that they are a profit-making business that makes most of its money off abortion." This accusation was the most disturbing thing about Johnson's story, and some speculated that Planned Parenthood's restraining order against Johnson was a desperate attempt to keep such mercenary practices under wraps. But as Marcotte points out, Broadsheet's Tracy Clark-Flory looked at the restraining order, and found that it was issued pretty much for exactly the reasons we guessed: namely, a doctor was at risk.

According to Clark-Flory, the order accuses Johnson of copying confidential files after Planned Parenthood initiated a performance review of her, and of passing personal information — including home address — about an abortion provider to the anti-choice group Coalition for Life. It doesn't sound like Planned Parenthood is trying to silence a turncoat with inside information about its evil schemes. Instead, the organization appears to be protecting its employees from the threat of harassment — or, in the wake of abortion provider George Tiller's murder, worse.

Questions about the ultrasound story aside (Clark-Flory, too, wonders "How many pamphlets and protest signs displaying extremely graphic images (far more so than an ultrasound) must have been shoved in her face over the years?"), the reasons for Johnson's decision to leave Planned Parenthood aren't for us to judge. But as her public profile rises — Clark-Flory writes that she's soon to appear on The O'Reilly Factor — many people will take her for an authority on the inner workings of Planned Parenthood. If Johnson really is guilty of both misrepresenting Planned Parenthood's tactics and leaking confidential information (she denies the latter), then she not only doesn't deserve to speak for her former organization, but she's not a valid advocate for the anti-abortion position. Principled anti-abortion advocates should be just as skeptical as pro-choicers are of Johnson's story — if they stand for morality, they shouldn't want a liar on their side.

Former Planned Parenthood Director Telling Fishy Story [Double X]
The Conversion Of A Pro-Choice Warrior [Broadsheet]
"I Used To Call Myself Pro-Life" [Broadsheet]

Feeling an inevitable attack from Joy Behar's progressive lips coming on, Elisabeth backpedaled a bit, saying the decision is "never an easy one, mark my words."

Joy did have something to say - it just wasn't what Elisabeth was expecting.

For some people, believe it or not, Elisabeth, it is a very easy decision. I know that's hard to understand, but there are people who do not think anything of it.

Speaking from personal experience, that's true. At the same time, just because someone doesn't get all precious about terminating a pregnancy doesn't mean that she did it for "superficial reasons". Or that she should be forced to look at pictures of, well, anything.

Thing is, their efforts are working. CBS News reports:

Anti-abortion Democrats were circulating language to strengthen prohibitions in the bill against federal funding of abortion. The bill stipulates that people getting federal subsidies would have to use their own money to get abortions, but that division is not clear enough to satisfy some lawmakers. Lawmakers are considering language that would make a more straightforward declaration against use of federal funds for abortion.

On immigration, it's still not settled whether illegal immigrants would be allowed to shop for insurance within a new purchasing exchange. Some lawmakers say that even if they use their own money to buy private plans they would be getting a benefit from the federally established exchange. The White House does not want illegal immigrants to access the exchange, and the Senate bill would keep them out.

Oh wait, hold on - they screwed something up.

On immigration, it's still not settled whether illegal immigrants undocumented workers would be allowed to shop for insurance within a new purchasing exchange. Some lawmakers say that even if they use their own money to buy private plans they would be getting a benefit from the federally established exchange. The White House does not want illegal immigrants undocumented workers to access the exchange, and the Senate bill would keep them out.

Now, as many have pointed out before, keeping undocumented people from getting health insurance doesn't do much at all - just like the rest of us uninsured people, we wait until our problem is too bad to ignore and then go clog the halls of hospital emergency rooms. And it isn't as if this is a new problem - back in 2007, an article described some of the struggles hospitals had with meeting the qualifications for "emergency coverage":

Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.

But we all know opposition to the health care bill isn't driven by a desire to help the most people - it's a way to advance an issue. And, as the Washington Post explains today, the anti-choice lobby has seized the moment:

Democratic leaders early this summer backed a provision that would allow people to use subsidies under the bill to buy insurance plans that cover abortion, but only funds from individual or employer health-care premiums could go toward paying for an abortion. Effectively, insurance companies would be tasked with segregating money from government payments from those coming from private sources, and only the latter could be used for abortion.

But Stupak and some Democrats, along with congressional Republicans, have criticized this provision as an accounting distinction. They say the federal subsidies and the private payments are combined for a person to buy a health plan; therefore, federal dollars are helping fund insurance plans that allow abortions. [...]

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signed by 183 lawmakers who Stupak helped organize, a group of mainly Republicans wrote: "The U.S. government should not be in the business of promoting abortion as health care. Real health care is about saving and nurturing life, not about taking life."

Real health care is about saving and nurturing life? This from people who are trying to block others from getting a decent shot at coverage? I must have missed the white rabbit running by.

Even the Catholic Church is getting in on the action:

The issue is also causing headaches for the Catholic Church, where a long-standing opposition to abortion is running headlong into the church's equally long-standing support for a comprehensive health overhaul.

"I think in our files we have a letter from the bishops to Harry Truman urging comprehensive health care reform," says Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, referring to the unsuccessful mid-20th century fight in Congress to pass a health overhaul bill.

The Catholic Church is not just an advocate for health care, but also a major provider. "Our Catholic charities and Catholic hospitals outlets take care of millions of people," Doerflinger says. "I think it's been estimated that one-sixth of the people who go into a hospital every year are going into a Catholic hospital."

But so far, the church hasn't been able to support either the House or Senate versions of the health bills now being readied for floor votes because of their abortion language.

"We want health care reform very, very much, but we cannot do that over children's dead bodies, to put it most bluntly," he says. "There is a fundamental issue here about whether taking life should be treated the same way as supporting and healing life."

In other news, the GOP has managed to patch together some form of alternative healthcare bill, with a focus on cutting costs and adding less to the deficit. Guess how they did it?

"Our substitute aims at driving down costs," House Minority Leader John Boehner told reporters Monday. "If you drive down costs, you can expand access."

Boehner hasn't released the full details of the bill but has said that it would make it easier to buy insurance across state lines, impose strict limits on medical malpractice lawsuits and allow individuals and small businesses to pool their resources to buy insurance as a group. That is designed to boost their purchasing power to help lower individual premiums. [...]

The Republican legislation won't end insurance industry practices that discriminate against high-risk individuals or provide tax credits to help the uninsured purchase coverage, even though both were included in rank-and-file GOP bills. [...]

"When I'm back home in Indiana, people aren't stopping me on the street, clamoring for universal coverage," Pence said. "They're stopping me on the street, saying that 30, 40, 50 percent increases in their premiums at their small businesses or their family farms are crushing the life out of families and enterprises and local communities."

So the solution is to increase competition by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines? Have these people ever dealt with a health care company? I can see the form letters now:

But still, I suppose this new tactic beats random foolishness from the Republicans:

"I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room - this very room - and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill," said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). "I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country."

And she's serious. Representative Foxx, where were you doing the PATRIOT Act? Or is giving up those freedoms cool because taxes aren't involved?

Sigh. Another day, another frustrating glimpse into the process of reforming our health care system.

House Dems' Health Reform Hurdles Dwindle [CBS News]
U.S. Rule Limits Emergency Care for Immigrants [New York Times]
Democrats' concerns over abortion may imperil health bill [Washington Post]
Abortion Language Creates Snag For Health Bill [NPR]
GOP health bill focuses on lower costs [Politico]
Virginia Foxx: Health Care Reform Greater Threat than Terrorism [CBS News]

Johnson says she changed her mind about abortion after watching an ultrasound of the procedure. "I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," she told KBTX's Ashlea Sigman. However, she also says she was disturbed by a change in Planned Parenthood's business model. She claims she was pressed to get more "abortions in the door" because "the money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion." She's now a supporter of the anti-abortion group Coalition for Life, and Planned Parenthood has filed a restraining order against both Johnson and the Coalition. The order doesn't forbid Johnson from praying or protesting on the premises, but it does say that "Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information."

Opponents of abortion — at least, those who comment on Breitbart.tv — see the restraining order as "cultish" behavior and evidence that Planned Parenthood is guilty of malfeasance. One says, "It's going to hurt their reputation if she talks? Well, isn't that a damning statement in & of itself?" The allegation that Planned Parenthood was trying to do more abortions just for the money is disturbing, and I hope it isn't true. But Planned Parenthood wouldn't have to be guilty of anything so mercenary for Johnson to be able to harm it — she could, for instance, disclose details about patients or donors that would enable anti-abortion activists to harass them, not only causing Planned Parenthood's donation base to shrink but also scaring women away from exercising their reproductive rights. If I was a patient at Planned Parenthood, I would want to know that, should the director of the facility have a "change of heart," my confidentiality would still be protected.

Johnson says that since leaving Planned Parenthood, "I feel so pure in heart. I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion." She's entitled to her opinion, and to live her life as she sees fit. But she's one person, and her story doesn't prove, as one conservative blog claims, that the country is turning against abortion because "improved imaging techniques have verified the humanity of gestating life." Nor does everyone who does what she once did live with a constant sense of guilt or "burden." Many people feel "pure in heart" through supporting reproductive freedom, not protesting against it, and while Johnson deserves the right to speak for herself, she doesn't speak for everybody.

Planned Parenthood Leader Resigns After Watching Ultrasound Of Abortion Procedure [Breitbart.tv]
Planned Parenthood Director Leaves, Has Change Of Heart [KBTX]

The three drawings for sale were apparently done by another inmate jailed with Roeder, but all three are signed by him. They're being sold by an eBay user named mission.for.life, who just signed up on October 30 and is also selling many of the other items originally listed as part of the planned auction, including a megaphone signed by anti-abortion activist Regina Dinwiddie, and an Army of God manual, which "lists ways to damage abortion clinics." This last item's description reads, in part, "The Manual concludes with a paragraph commonly said to advocate the killing of abortionists. The sentences are '...Whosoever sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed [Gen. 9:6]...we are forced to take arms against you. Our life for yours...'"

These lines seem to violate eBay's stated policy barring "listings that promote or glorify violence, hate, racial or religious intolerance, or items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," and it's unclear whether eBay decided to allow the auction or whether its organizers simply listed the items over the company's objections. EBay may well take the entire auction down in the next couple of hours, but we've taken some screenshots of Roeder's drawings:




The David-and-Goliath image is obviously extremely creepy, but the one of Tiller's gravesite is upsetting for its sheer hypocrisy. The woman in it chooses grieving over retaliation, and perseverance over intimidation — the exact opposite of the choices Roeder made.


Mission.for.life's Items For Sale [eBay]
Drawings Commissioned By Scott Roeder [eBay]

Relating the tale of Dede Scozzafava, a Republican Congressional hopeful targeted by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin for being pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, Linda Hirschman explains that the GOP has a definite idea for the role of women in the party - and it isn't in elected positions.

But Scozzafava's defeat and the mounting campaign against Hutchison reveals a fascinating and underreported problem for the Republicans: They will only run women who will say that women should not control their reproductive fates. Although there are many male Republican candidates who easily embrace this position, politically accomplished women who believe in criminal abortion are rare, even in the Republican Party. And the ones who surface are likely to be, well, rogue. [...]

The transformation of the Republican Party by the rise of conservative, evangelical, and Southern movements disables the Republicans from grooming a new generation of female candidates. For one thing, the fecund, domesticated women they admire are too busy staying home with their children, and as a result there are very few prominent female Republican office-holders (as Palin's incoherent campaign reflected, it is very hard to be Tracy Flick, from Election, and June Cleaver simultaneously). The only elected female Republican governor (there are two who succeeded governors who resigned) is an outlier-a pro-choice Jewish woman from Hawaii. And Alaska's young Senator Lisa Murkowski is classified as a moderate and has a mixed record on the all-important abortion litmus test. By contrast, there are 13 female Democratic senators and four elected female Democratic governors. Only one-quarter of the 80 female representatives in the U.S. Congress are Republican; three-quarters are Democrats. Republican Scozzafava's withdrawal leaves these numbers in place.

It's clear that the unrelenting adherence to an anti-choice agenda is hurting the Republican party, in both representation and numbers. However, there are many who embrace their anti-choice stance and are using it to advance other priorities. In a different Daily Beast piece, Dana Goldstein explores how conservatives are successfully flexing their lobbying might and severely restricting abortion rights in the health care bill:

The Pelosi bill contains a number of provisions that would improve women's access to affordable health care, including ending "gender rating"-in which insurers charge women more for coverage-and making it illegal to classify C-sections, domestic violence, and even pregnancy as pre-existing conditions that disqualify women for health insurance. It includes new funding for comprehensive sex education, supplanting some of the abstinence-only programs favored by the Bush administration. The bill also aggressively expands Medicaid, the existing federal health-insurance program for low-income women and their children, which includes generous birth-control coverage.

But on the narrower issue of abortion access and affordability, the major pro-choice organizations aren't shy about expressing their disappointment: The legislation references abortion more than 25 times, mostly in an effort to restrict access to the procedure.

Conservative opposition to the health care bill has manifested in a few ways that actually strengthen regulations surrounding abortion. So, even with a pro-choice majority, our reproductive rights are still in danger:

Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health issues, told The Daily Beast, "Currently, it's not that we can't pay for coverage that includes abortions. It's that we can't cover abortions. The new standard is stricter than the standard in Hyde."

In addition, in each state, the health-insurance market must include one plan that does cover abortion, and one plan that does not. But because the vast majority of insurers currently do cover the procedure, pro-choicers view the provision as a step forward for the opposition. "That kind of leans toward the pro-life position," Waxman said.

How the GOP Loses Women [The Daily Beast]
Abortion Under Fire [The Daily Beast]

• According to a Gallup poll released earlier this year, New England is the least religious region in America, which is partially why Evangelists are targeting the apathetic Northern states. Some Christian denominations view New England as a "mission field," and MSNBC interviews several missionaries seeking to convert those living in and around Boston. From a New Englander born and bred: Good luck with that. •  The Georgia man accused of attacking an African-American woman outside of a Cracker Barrel while screaming racial slurs has been released on bail. Troy Dale West Jr. faces charges ranging from false imprisonment to cruelty to children, but no word yet on whether he will be charged with a hate crime. •  Soon after the election, 67% of Americans reported being "optimistic" about the future of race relations. But the so-called "Obama effect" didn't last long, and the percentage of optimistic folk has already slipped down to 56, which is only one point higher than in December 1963. • In his new memoir The Audacity to Win David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's presidential campaign, says Obama seriously considered asking Hillary Clinton to be his running mate. He writes; "[W]hat surprised me at [our first meeting to discuss the vice presidency] was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Ax and I had realized. He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list. She was competent, could help in Congress, would have international bona fides and had been through this before, albeit in a different role. He wanted to continue discussing her as we moved forward." • A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed another one of Orly Taitz's birther lawsuits. She asked the court to demand President Obama produce more documentation proving that he was born in the United States and to shut down the federal government and hold an election if he couldn't. The judge said it was unconstitutional for the courts to "effectively overthrow a sitting president." • Obama For America sent out a link to a commercial paid for by the DNC that features Sarah Palin's various health care lies followed by a clip of her saying "quit making things up." • The House Democrats healthcare reform bill unveiled today says, "Only private premium dollars can be used to provide abortion coverage. Where abortion coverage is provided, funds for this purpose must be segregated from other funds, including affordability credits," which won't satisfy pro-lifers who say private premiums and government subsidies given to low-income Americans can't be isolated and segregated. • New York Governor David Paterson has signed a bill that enhances the penalty for injuring an abortion provider, staff member, volunteer or patient. The legislation is a response to the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, and makes physically injuring someone obtaining or providing an abortion a class E felony rather than a misdemeanor. • Scientists in New Zealand are working on developing an ice cream called ReCharge that will help relieve the side-effects of chemotherapy in cancer patients. The "medical dessert" uses active ingredients from dairy products to relieve diarrhea, anemia and lack of appetite. • Susan Finkelstein, the woman accused of trying to trade sex for World Series tickets, will be given two tickets to Game 3 by a Philadelphia car dealer and the host of Chio in the Morning on WIRED-FM. • According to the CDC's Prevention's Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report released today, 11 percent of the U.S. population reports not getting enough sleep. 12.4 percent of women say they don't sleep enough compared to 9.9 percent of men. • A study by Trojan ranks the University of South Carolina as the nation's top university in sexual health. The ratings were based on a poll of students conducted on Facebook and data from on-campus student health centers. One big element of the school's sexual health awareness program are peer-to-peer groups sponsored by Student Health and Violence Prevention. • Ahmed Muhamed Dhore, a Somalian who claims he is 112 years old, says he has realized a "dream" by marrying a 17-year-old bride. He has married five times before, but three wives are dead. Dhore already has 13 children, the oldest of whom is 80, but says he would like more with his new bride, Safiya Abdulle. •

Image via Peter Rivera's Flickr

According to the Washington Independent (via Wonkette), Terry — of the Da-Vinci-code-ily-named Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex — is instructing followers to print out large pictures of Reid and Pelosi at Kinko's, then burn them in a Halloween-themed protest against "child-killing." This is apparently related to healthcare reform, probably because of all those mandatory abortions for schoolgirls we've been hearing so much about. In an instructional video (apparently more coherent than the one above, but sadly now removed from YouTube), a Terry acolyte says, "Be safe, have fun, and remember - you're engaging in a proud heritage of American protest."

Another proud American heritage: eBay. Supporters of Tiller's assassin Scott Roeder — yes, apparently there are some — are getting together an option to pay for his legal fees. Items on the block will include an autographed bullhorn like the ones anti-abortionists use to yell things outside clinics, and "an underground publication for anti-abortion militants that describes dozens of ways to shut down clinics, including bombing." The donor of this particular gem, auction organizer Dave Leach, explains,

I plan to cover up the offending eight pages of bomb recipes and instead insert a note saying that in order to avoid legal problems, we advise our bomb-loving friends to seek their bomb recipes in a U.S. Army Manual, which is approved by the Justice Department. I will also enclose my April 1996 issue, which contains bomb-making excerpts from a declassified U.S. Army Manual widely available in Army surplus stores.

But the most stomach-turning items are three jailhouse drawings signed by Scott Roeder and sent to anti-abortion activist Regina Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie describes one of the drawings thus:

It has David with a slingshot in one hand and the head of Goliath in his other hand and the name ‘Tiller' on Goliath's forehead. On the corpse on the ground, it says ‘child-murdering industry.'

Leach is planning a November 1 start date for the auction. EBay won't say whether it will allow it, commenting only that, "EBay does not allow listings that promote or glorify violence, hate, racial or religious intolerance, or items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." The blog Roeder Watch has instructions on how to contact eBay to protest the auction. I can't think of an obvious way to protest against Terry's effigy plan, except maybe by not burning likenesses of congresspeople on your lawn like a total fucking lunatic.

Randall Terry Orders, Teaches Everyone To Burn Pelosi & Reid [Wonkette]
How To Burn Pelosi And Reid In Effigy [Washington Independent]
Online Auction To Raise Funds In Scott Roeder Case [Kansas City Star]
Tell EBay No Auction For Scott Roeder [Roeder Watch]

Today's New York Times examines the situation, starting off with a grim portrait of the lengths women will go through to abort:

Gina Judilla already had three children the first time she tried to terminate a pregnancy. "I jumped down the stairs, hoping that would cause a miscarriage," she said. The fetus survived and is now an 8-year-old boy.

Three years later, pregnant again, she drank an herbal concoction that was supposed to induce abortion. That, too, failed.

Three years ago, in another unsuccessful attempt to end a pregnancy, she took Cytotec, a drug to treat gastric ulcers that is widely known in the Philippines as an "abortion pill."

The article reveals that abortion in the Philippines is illegal, and, though reproductive health services are available through a private medical system, as much as 70% of the population is too poor to access birth control methods and information. While the state-run health care system does provide for some of these services, it is implemented by local authorities, many of whom promptly banned birth control citing religious reasons.

More recently, however, family planning advocates have been making headway in their campaign to change that. Legislation before the Philippine Congress, called the Reproductive Health and Population Development Act, would require governments down to the local level to provide free or low-cost reproductive health services, including condoms, birth control pills, tubal ligations and vasectomies. It would also mandate sex education in all schools, public and private, from fifth grade through high school.

Supporters of the bill cite urgent public health needs. A 2006 government survey, which interviewed 46,000 women, found that between 2000 and 2006, only half of Filipino women of reproductive age used birth control of any kind. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that researches reproductive health policy, 54 percent of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines in 2008 were unintended.

Most of those unintended pregnancies - 92 percent - resulted from not using birth control, the institute said, and the rest from birth control that failed. Those unintended pregnancies, the institute says, contributed to an estimated half-million abortions that year, despite a ban on the procedure. Most of the abortions are done clandestinely and in unsanitary conditions. Many women resort to crude methods like those Ms. Judilla tried.

Opponents of the bill are finding their support in churches, saying:

The Rev. Melvin Castro of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, an arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said the Catholic Church and the laity would fight the bill, if passed into law, up to the Supreme Court.

"The Constitution is very clear that the state should protect life from conception up to its natural end," Father Castro said."Regardless of their religion, Filipinos are God-fearing and family-loving. This bill will change that culture."

Interestingly, both sides are arguing that they are working in the best interests of women. The opposition explains they want to "to protect [women's] wombs from those who want to take away life." They do not provide a reason why women like Judilla have to suffer to protect their ideology.

(Image Credit: Luis Liwanag for The New York Times)

Bill to Increase Access To Contraception Is Dividing Filipinos [NY Times]

As we mentioned yesterday, the report found no correlation between abortion rates and legality of abortion. That is, regions where abortion is banned don't actually have lower rates of abortion — they just have lots of women getting unsafe abortions. Unfortunately for women all over the world, the pro-choice argument that women will seek back-alley abortions if the procedure is forbidden turns out to be totally true. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 70,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions, another 5 million need to be treated for complications, and 3 million suffer such complications but never get treated at all. The sample methods of unsafe abortion the Institute lists are chilling, and include drinking manure and jumping off a roof.

What does reduce the rate of abortions? Contraception. Worldwide, the rate of unintended pregnancy has dropped, just as the rate of contraceptive use among married women has risen. And Eastern Europe, where the greatest decline in abortion was reported, has seen a corresponding rise in contraceptive use. Unfortunately, only 28% of married African women use contraception, and one in four has an unmet need for contraceptives — meaning she is fertile and sexually active but does not currently want to have a child. Most commonly, the problem is lack of availability.

The Catholic Church, which has a lot of influence in many of the developing countries where the most unsafe abortion occurs, is pretty much holding its hands over its ears and singing through this news. Deirdre McQuade of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities says, "We need to be much more creative in assisting women with supportive services so they don't need to resort to the unnatural act of abortion." This stance is pretty unsurprising. A little more disturbing is McQuade's take on contraception. According to the AP, she says "that use of artificial contraception could increase a women's health risks and said they would fare better using natural family planning methods approved by the church." Given that "natural family planning" can require careful timing on the part of both partners, it may not be an effective method in places where women's status in a relationship is low. And of course, it doesn't protect against STDs. It would have made sense for McQuade to cite religious objections to contraception, but describing as a "women's health risk" the very thing that can protect women from both unsafe abortion and disease just seems ridiculous. Luckily, Guttmacher Institute president Sharon Camp says,

The Catholic Church has informally at least stopped fighting against contraception to the degree it once did and put more of its energies into fighting abortion. On the ground there are priests and nuns who refer people to family planning services.

It's important to remember that unsafe abortions don't happen only in developing countries. Yesterday a 17-year-old Utah girl was released after being charged with murder for paying a man to beat her in order to induce abortion. Why would an American teenager resort to this? Maybe because as of 2005, Utah had only six abortion providers, and 93% of counties had no provider? Or because Utah has a parental consent law that would have required the girl's parents to agree to the abortion? The Guttmacher Institute report makes three recommendations: improve postabortion care, expand access to contraceptives, and expand access to safe and legal abortion. These measures are just as necessary in the US as they are around the world.

Abortion And Unintended Pregnancy Decline Worldwide As Contraceptive Use Increases [Guttmacher Institute]
Facts On Induced Abortion Worldwide [Guttmacher Institute]
Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 A Year [Guardian]
Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 Annually [AP]
Girl Who Tried Killing Her Fetus Released [UPI.com]

• The so-called "Hecession" continues in the UK: According to a new report, one of out every ten men will be unemployed next year. Young men and black men have it the worst, with one in five currently out of work. •  Teenage boys in Sweden are kind of jerks, says study. Researchers found that many of them are unwilling to take precautions to prevent the spread of chlamydia, and that "a very high proportion of the boys state that they will not be following the advice given during [sex ed] classes and that almost as many think that sex education has no impact whatsoever on their sexual behaviour." • A study out of Rice University found that girls who have a better sense of smell are also more attuned to emotional cues. This suggests an overlap between the emotional section of the brain and the olfactory. •  Many women with uterine fibroid tumors are advised to get hysterectomies, but according to the New York Times there are several other treatment options for those suffering from the tumors, some of them less invasive. •  Members of the Yale community gathered yesterday to pay their last respects to slain medical student Annie Le. She was remembered by University President Richard Levin as bright, caring, loving, and spontaneous. • In most countries, animals are stunned before they are slaughtered, which decreases their pain. However, religious killings often do not stun the animal first, but new research on pain may increase the pressure to adapt Jewish and Muslim religious law. • Scientists have determined that in rare cases cancer can be passed from a mother to her unborn child after a 28-year-old Japanese mother passed leukemia cells to her baby through the placenta. The mother died of leukemia shortly after giving birth and at 11 months old the daughter was diagnosed with lymphoma. She is now in remission. • 12-year-old Abby Miller plays her guitar and sings on the street to raise money for her 4-year-old friend, Taylor Love, who has neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system. The money goes to Love's family and Miller also asks people to write "Love Notes" to Taylor. "Her mom reads them to her before she goes to bed at night," Abby said. "Taylor gets excited for them and she loves getting them read to her because she likes knowing that people are supporting her and people are actually thinking of her." • According to a new study, people who get most of their daily liquids from plain water rather than other beverages tend have healthier diets in general and eat more fiber, less sugar, and fewer calorie-dense foods. • Authorities in Austria haven't been able to sell the home where Josef Fritzl imprisoned and raped his daughter for 24 years. Three of his other properties have been sold and the profits have gone to Fritzl's creditors and his daughter Elisabeth. The police have rejected some offers to turn the dungeons below the home into a museum. • A 17-year-old Utah girl who paid a 21-year-old man $150 to beat her in an attempt to kill her late-term fetus was released from jail today when a judge ruled it was a legal attempt at abortion, not murder. She gave birth in August and is seeking custody of her baby girl, who is currently in state custody. • Police have arrested Dennis Earl Bradford, a 40-year-old welder, for allegedly abducting, raping, and slitting the throat of 8-year-old Jennifer Schuett in 1990 and leaving her for dead in a field. Advances in DNA technology let authorities make the match. Schuett, who survived the attack and is now 27, said, "This event in my life was a tragic one... But today, 19 years later, I stand here and want you all to know that I am OK. I am not a victim, but instead, victorious." •