Thursday, July 28, 2011

Hunt's Press Statements Reacting to the Helpful Newly Enacted 'Woman's Right to Know Act'

Primary Statement
Abortion destroys an unborn child, a unique, individual human life, and this is what makes abortion difficult for women. Many pregnant women feel pressure into aborting a child by their circumstances, by parents, by the father of the baby, or by their own needs and goals They are nudged along by deceptive and incomplete counseling at the abortion centers, which stand to profit though abortion. The new law gives women every opportunity to know all the facts about abortion and how they can let their babies live. It will inform them about how they can find a better solution to their situations, even if they already have made a decision—because even after a woman walks into the clinic door, it’s not too late for her to change her mind.


Analysis
Most arguments against the Act are arguments for abortion, especially in the hard cases. If you believe abortion only eliminates a ball of cells or if the “fetus” is not fully human or not a person, you would think it bad to add “burdens” to a “simple, safe medical procedure.” But really, the bill is pro-choice. Why do “pro-choice” people oppose the bill? Maybe they’re not being honest—pro-choice may only be a useful slogan that they do not mean sincerely. Maybe the political pro-choice viewpoint really is pro-abortion. The Act occupies a morally absurd place where the State of North Carolina will make it easier for a pregnant woman to know that abortion destroys an unborn child at same time she retains the choice to destroy her unborn child, legally.


Overall Social Effect
The WRTK Act represents a transition from “abortion on demand” to “abortion under advisement” which is what some countries in Europe now have. Germany, for example, requires a three day waiting period after government specified counseling—far more intensive than the WRTK Act. Because of its past record on human rights, Germany understands the interest and role of government in protecting human life.


Arguments and Counter Arguments

There is the factor that the free standing abortion clinics in North Carolina do not provide an ordinary long-term relationship with a doctor. In Asheville, for example, at the abortion place on Orange Street, a woman does not get her own appointment. She arrives at the same time as a half dozen other women, and people are escorted inside the waiting room only after a security check. She stays four hours and leaves, maybe coming back for a checkup at a later time. Many people drive from out of town, even from out of state. An abortionist is not usually a woman’s personal doctor.

Planned Parenthood has four abortion centers in NC and all the other PP centers in NC do abortion referral. The other day, I looked at the website of PP of Central NC and when I checked to see what information it offered on abortion, it had a link to the PP Federation of America. I was amazed to see how much PPFA fudged the truth about the risks of abortion and the facts about pre-natal human development.

For example: PP says on its website, “The ball of cells develops into an embryo at the start of the sixth week.” That’s entirely misleading because the embryonic stage begins at fertilization, and a human embryo at six weeks is far more developed than a ball of cells.

Planned Parenthood’s assertions about the medical and emotional risks of abortion range from oversimplified to untrue.

This is why we need the Woman’s Right to Know Act: to protect women from the unethical, deceptive practices of Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses in North Carolina.

A Planned Parenthood advertisement that said it aborts children up through the 20th week in three of its North Carolina clinics. The 20th week! It's murder.

One abortion place in Asheville that closed in 1998 was at the outskirts of Biltmore Village. This place was the pits. It was surrounded by RR tracks. The waiting room was a bridge over a dirty creek. It had peeling roofing material for siding. Had bars and broken windows in the back. The abortionists drove up from Tennessee or South Carolina. I remember catching Dr. James Oliver sneaking down the RR tracks to let himself in by the back gate. He was wearing a U.S. Customs hat and pretended to be RR security. He worked at a Catholic hospital in South Carolina where he had pledged to give up abortion. They had no admitting privileges in a local hospital. The local abortion doctors at “Femcare” tried to close this place down because they were seeing women in the emergency room who had been hurt there. Some of the abortion places in NC are of the same sleazy type.

It’s true that certain basic information is required to be offered, but that in no way prohibits a doctor from presenting it in ways that are appropriate to the hearer, and addressing the woman about her own personal situation.

The Woman’s Right to Know Act requires the use of all of appropriate medically accurate information and likely will reduce the “need” for abortion as women better understand their unborn children and all the resources available to them.


For (pro-abortion-choice) information on the requirements of other states, see: www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_MWPA.pdf
and www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_RFU.pdf

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Americans United for Life's Investigative Report on Planned Parenthood

Go to:

http://www.aul.org/aul-special-report-the-case-for-investigating-planned-parenthood/

One item from the report's Executive Summary:
"Willingness to provide women with inaccurate and misleading information. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates continually demonstrate a disregard for women’s health and safety through their willingness to provide inaccurate and misleading information regarding fetal development and about abortion’s inherent health risks."

To a Student at Shanghai American School on "Abortion as Genocide."

This letter is a continuation of our correspondence. The student is writing as part of an AP Language class. It began with an essay of hers in response to one of mine and one of Cathleen Kaveny, professor of law and theology at Notre Dame.


Dear Emily,

I appreciate the tone of your discussion. You might be interested to know that one of my sons, who was 18 at the time, spent last spring semester at the City University of Hong Kong and also traveled some on the mainland of China while he was there.

The original context of the [my] essay that appeared in the Opposing Viewpoints Series was a university student newspaper where I was answering specific criticisms, which limited the scope of the points I made.

A fundamental issue surrounding abortion is personhood. One similarity between abortion and more recognized atrocities such as genocide is the denial of personhood status to human beings. I think that you will find it almost universally accepted in the scientific/medical world that an individual human life begins at fertilization. The controversy centers on the philosophical/political question of when a human being becomes a person. “Pro-life” people say that a human being at whatever stage of development is a person, while “pro-choice” people make a variety of claims but generally say that a human being does not become a full person with a legal right to life until “viabilty” or birth.

Citing possible positive outcomes does not solve the ethical issues of personhood because one could also find such outcomes for the Holocaust, as an example. The creation of the State of Israel as a sanctuary for Jewish survivors was one positive result, and as morally absurd as it sounds, the Holocaust reduced the overall instance of crime among the Jewish populations, which had a net effect on crime.

(In any case, the positive outcomes you referenced, and the research are certainly contested. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime . )

I would like to address the other specifics that you mentioned, but time is limited, so I offer a referral to two books that represent the best pro-life apologetics I know, both by Francis J. Beckwith, a professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University. The books are: Politically Correct Death: Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights and Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice.

Both books, and editorial summaries and reviews, can be found at http://www.amazon.com/ . One item Beckwith raises is a difference between artifactual and biological development. An artifact, like a clock or a rocket, is put together piece by piece and is not functional as such until it is complete. A living being, however, begins all at once and in time its self-directed development shows us what it has been all along.

A final comment: I don’t think any word is adequate now to describe all that abortion is. “Foeticide” has as weakness the common use of the word “fetus” to dehumanize pre-natal human life. Fetus does not specifically apply to human beings, but to any mammalian species. Maybe we will just have to wait for someone like Raphel Lemkin, someone with a passionate intellectual interest in the law and in words combined with an overwhelming personal interest in the terribleness of the Holocaust, since most of his relatives were murdered. And perhaps we will have to wait for more of a consensus against abortion, since it’s not the words themselves that have power, but the weight we give to them.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

WRTK Summary

The NC General Assembly may soon attempt to override Governor Perdue's veto of the Woman's Right to Know Act (WRTK), HB 854. The GA needs only one additional vote in both the House and Senate. Basically, WRTK requires a 24 hour waiting period and the informed consent of a woman before “an abortion can be performed.”

Except in a medical emergency, the information that must be made available by phone or in person 24 hours in advance are:

-The name of the physician.
-Medical risks of abortion.
-Gestational age of the unborn child.
-Medical risks of carrying the child to term.
-Ultrasound images or sound of the heartbeat are available.
-If the physician has malpractice insurance.
-The location of the hospital within 30 miles that offers OB/GYN care and at which the physician has clinical privileges. If he does not, that must be made known.
-Medical assistance benefits for pre-natal care, childbirth, and neonatal care
-Public assistance benefits
-The father is liable for child support payments even if he offered to pay for abortion
-The woman has alternatives to abortion available, including adoption and keeping the baby.
-The woman has a right to view printed materials or information online that describe the unborn child and list agencies that provide alternatives to abortion.
-The woman has the right to withdraw her consent at any time before or during the abortion without the losing the right of future care and state or federal benefits.

The other significant requirement is that an ultrasound scan of the baby must be made at least four hours prior to abortion and the woman can look at the images and listen to the fetal heart tone as well as listen to a simultaneous description of the baby, if she wishes.

This is a link to the text of the ratified bill (HB 854): www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/Bills/House/PDF/H854v5.pdf

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Saturday, July 2, 2011 on Orange Street. 8:00 AM. The abortion site was closed for the 4th holiday. These flowers are next door at Catholic Social Services.