Pro Life @ MindSay 
pro choice
By Daniel C. Maguire
People should be judged by the ideals they most loudly profess.
O.K., "Pro-Lifers," here goes.
Archbishop Tutu (would that we had even one bishop like him in the United
States!) writes: "Some 2 million children have died in dozens of wars
during the past decade...This is more than three times the number of
battlefield deaths of American soldiers in all their wars since
1776...Today, civilians account for more than 90 percent of war
casualties."
Children are the prime casualties of modern war. As Professor Jeffrey
Sachs of Columbia University writes: "Children in urban war zones die in
vast numbers, not just due to violence, but also from diarrhea,
respiratory infections and other causes, owing to unsafe drinking water,
lack of refrigerated foods, and acute shortages of blood and basic
medicines in clinics and hospitals." Pregnant women and their fetuses
suffer from these same lethal deprivations and pregnant women and their
fetuses are being bombed in their homes.
If you who sanctimoniously wear the "pro-life" banner were really
pro-life-and pro-fetus--- that would bother you and we would be hearing
your voices raised powerfully in peace protests around the world. We
don't. Therefore we must conclude that you are not "pro-life" and that if
you say you are, you are liars. (Those who disapprove of all abortions
and also oppose war must find another motto: "pro-life" has been coopted
on the American scene by right wing militarists.)
American military leaders in Iraq have been quoted as saying "we don't do
body counts." (Interesting, since even "the mob" does body counts.) The
respected British journal The Lancet does do body-counts; they counted
the bodies of civilians killed in Iraq. They concluded that there are
more than 100,000 civilians deaths, most due to U.S. military action.
President Bush is responsible for those murders because he entered this
war without the Declaration of War that the constitution (Article one,
Section 8) requires. A cowardly Congress in a week of infamy (October
3-10, 2002) limply handed over their war-declaring rights to him, giving
the president open-ended authority to use unrestricted power, which could
mean nuclear weapons, whenever he alone deemed it appropriate.
How did those who call them selves "pro-life" respond to this appalling
assault on the Constitution and on life. They voted en masse for George
W. Bush, the slaughter-master of Iraq, the killer of civilian men, women
and children, including pregnant women and their fetuses in a war that
Pope John Paul called a "defeat for humanity." Mr. Bush said he saw their
vote as an endorsement of his war. He was right. The election was a
chance to vote against that war, but, overwhelmingly the so called
"pro-life" vote was for war.
Can you understand why we call you liars?
Sister Joan Chittister writes of a front page, large four-color picture
in The Irish Times. It showed a small Iraqi girl. "Her little body was a
coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark
night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were
blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot
through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat
beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back
seat."
Indifference to this and to all those war crimes like it, on the part of
anyone is criminal and sinful in the extreme. Indifference to it by those
who canonize themselves with the "pro-life" insignia shown by their
recent vote for more of it, is even worse. Such hypocrisy should be
called by its name. Its name is fraud. Its name is lying, lying under the
very banner of "life."
Do you support free, universal health-care with blanket coverage for everyone?
And if you don't, explain, to me, the logic of your hypocrisy.
Palin: Abortion Clinic Bombers Not Terrorists
On Friday, NBC broadcast a joint interview with McCain and Palin. When questioned by NBC’s Brian Williams, Palin refused to say whether people who blew up abortion clinics are terrorists.
Brian William: “Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist, under this definition, Governor?”
Sarah Palin: “There’s no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable, I don’t know if you’re going to use the word ‘terrorist’ there.”
Source: Democracy Now!
Thursday 18 September 2008
by: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Cecile Richards, The New York Times
Senator Hillary Clinton speaking in New York. (Photo: Reuters)
Last month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women's rights and women's health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing - whether it's a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government - certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.
Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.
Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.
The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD's and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.
The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified "other medical procedures" that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.
Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of "other medical procedures." Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?
The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider's conscience. But where are the protections for patients?
The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
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