Report: Anti-choice Republican forced mistress to have an abortion

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

A Tea Party Republican congressman who has backed anti-abortion legislation has been revealed to have pressured a mistress to get an abortion of her own.

The Huffington Post reported Wednesday that Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), a former physician, had an affair with a patient that resulted in him pressuring the unidentified woman to get an abortion in September 2000.

Earlier this year, DesJarlais denounced fellow Republican Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) over Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments. However, DesJarlais has not backed away from his support of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” co-sponsored by Akin and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP candidate for vice president.

“I have been a consistent supporter of pro-life values,” DesJarlais told The Chattanooga Times Free-Press in August. “This bipartisan bill simply prevents taxpayer dollars from being used to perform abortions. Human life is sacred and taxpayer funding of abortion is counter to the values a great many Tennesseans hold.”

The bill, which passed in the House of Representatives last year but stalled out in the Senate, sought to increase restrictions on government funding for abortions — which already prohibits federal funding from being used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest and the life of the pregnant woman — by limiting eligibility to victims of “forcible rape.” In August, Ryan tried to distance himself from the bill by saying it used “stock language.”

The Post’s report is based on the transcript of the call, which was recorded by DesJarlais. In a statement, DesJarlais did not deny making the call when presented with a copy of the transcript, but dismissed it as partisan gamesmanship.

“Desperate personal attacks do not solve our nation’s problems,” the statement said. “Yet it appears my opponents are choosing to once again engage in the same gutter politics that CBS news called the dirtiest in the nation just 2 years ago.”

Former Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), who lost his reelection bid to DesJarlais in 2010, told the Post his campaign was sent a transcript of the call late in the campaign, but did not use it because Davis wasn’t able to verify it at the time.

However, Davis said DesJarlais’ ex-wife, Susan, later confirmed the information.

“She said he did it himself,” Davis said. “She said the doctor did. She said, ‘He recorded it and let me listen to it.’ She confirmed to me that Scott DesJarlais is the one who actually did the recording, and let her listen to it.”

According to the Post, DesJarlais called the woman as part of a failed attempt to repair his marriage.

“I’ve been going crazy,” “I mean, if Susan could talk to you, she’d tell you that I’ve been psychotic for months over this.”

DesJarlais and the woman subsequently argued over who initiated the affair and where to meet for the abortion procedure.

“If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let’s do it,” he said.

Court records indicated that DesJarlais confessed to having at least four affairs during the marriage. At one point, the couple had “a written agreement” allowing them to see other people. The DesJarlais’ divorce was finalized in 2001.

Sen. DeMint takes aim at Planned Parenthood ‘robo-abortions’

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina submitted an amendment to an appropriations bill on Tuesday to ensure that federal funding being invested in telemedicine services can not be used by reproductive health centers like Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa have tested a program that allows pregnant women to remotely consult with a qualified physician about the abortion drug mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486. The drug can only be prescribed by specially licensed physicians.

Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa sneeringly labelled the practice “robo-abortion” and submitted an amendment to the Agriculture appropriations bill in June to block “telemedicine for the robo-abortions.”

DeMint submitted the same amendment to the Senate version of the legislation.

The reproductive rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America said the amendment would have profoundly negative effects on women’s health.

“What about a woman experiencing a high-risk pregnancy who is talking with her doctor through video conferencing?” Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement.

“Under Sen. DeMint’s extreme plan, if abortion came up in that doctor-patient conversation, the woman and her physician would have to go to a separate communications system. He’s calling for an abortion-only version of Skype. It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor.”

A recently published study found virtual abortion counseling was just as effective and acceptable to patients as a face-to-face office visit. Women who received remote counseling had no more complications than those who had office visits.

Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Criminal Charges In Mississippi, Alabama

By Marie Diamond/Think Progress

This year, the Georgia legislature considered a bill that would require women to prove their miscarriages “occurred naturally” and weren’t secret abortions. In a similar vein, the Guardian reports that states including Mississippi and Alabama are charging dozens of women with murder or other serious crimes who have miscarried or had stillbirths:

Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.[...]

In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state’s “chemical endangerment” law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes. Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way.[...]

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth. Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with “chemical endangerment” of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

“That shocked me, it really did,” Kimbrough said. “I had lost a child, that was enough.”

Kimbrough is now facing a 10-year sentence if her case is not reversed on appeal — a 10 year sentence that will deprive her three other children of their mother.

A common tactic by prosecutors is singling out a group of women who are unlikely to draw public sympathy — women who may have used drugs while pregnant — to blur the line between abortion and homicide. Rennie Gibbs, for example, was 15 when she became pregnant and lost her baby in a stillbirth. Prosecutors charged her with a “depraved heart murder” after they discovered she had used cocaine, although there was “no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death.” She now faces life in prison in Mississippi.

Targeting women who use drugs while they are pregnant is exactly the wrong policy for protecting the health of their future children. When a woman who is addicted to drug becomes pregnant, she needs immediate treatment to ensure that her addiction does not lead to serious birth defects for her child. But the threat of criminal prosecution — especially for a crime as serious as murder — will only drive her into the shadows. For this reason, dozens of public health organizations including the American Public Health Association have all denounced these prosecutions as harmful to both woman and child.

Other prosecutors are twisting laws designed to protect pregnant women and their unborn children into attacks on childbearers themselves. At least 38 states have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to be used against violent attacks by third parties like abusive male partners. But in South Carolina, only one case has been brought against a man for assaulting a pregnant woman, while up to 300 women have been arrested under the law, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

These prosecutions are part of a much broader assault on women’s reproductive rights. Indeed, it’s been a banner year for the right’s war on women, with state legislatures passing a slew of restrictive legislation across the country that not only impede women’s constitutional right to abortions but also jeopardize their access to basic health care. Four states have defunded Planned Parenthood so far, a new Ohio law bans abortions as early as six weeks without exceptions for rape or incest, and Texas is one of several states that now forces women seeking abortions to undergo waiting periods and mandatory sonograms. Some groups and lawmakers are even pushing to outlaw contraceptives like birth control pills.

Santorum Calls Abortion Exceptions To Protect Health Of The Mother ‘Phony’

By Marie Diamond

Longshot GOP presidential hopeful and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum stomped for votes in Iowa on Tuesday, trumpeting his “culture wars” message. A longtime anti-abortion activist, Santorum is selling himself as the leading social conservative in a crowded field. Yesterday in West Des Moines, he made an appearance at a “crisis pregnancy center” called Informed Choices that tries to talk women out of having abortions. Santorum said that he “separates [himself] from the rest of the pack” and criticized the other candidates for simply “checking the box” on anti-abortion issues.

When discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony”:

SANTORUM: When I was leading the charge on partial birth abortion, several members came forward and said, “Why don’t we just ban all abortions?” Tom Daschle was one of them, if you remember. And Susan Collins, and others.They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective.

Watch it:

Santorum’s complete lack of empathy for women who find themselves with life-threatening pregnancies is repugnant, but not altogether surprising. When the Senate took up the ban in the ’90s, the debate was focused not on banning an abortion method, but rather on what exceptions would be allowed under the new law. Senators led by Santorum “refused to allowan exception even to protect the woman from serious harm to her health,” while President Clinton refused to sign the bill without one.

Although there are any number of serious medical emergencies that might require a woman to terminate a pregnancy in her third trimester to protect her own health, Santorum and his allies “said that ‘health’ is nothing but a loophole for women who would abort a pregnancy to fit into a prom dress.” Back then, Santorum decried “the selfishness, the individual self-centeredness” of legislators who were concerned about the health of pregnant women. Judging by his latest remarks, he’s still holding a grudge.

LA GOP Rep Defends Bill Banning Abortion, Compares Women Seeking Abortions To Heroin Addicts

By Tanya Somanader

As ThinkProgress’s Marie Diamond reported last week, the extreme anti-abortion group Personhood USA is making headway in GOP-led state legislatures across the country with efforts to turn abortion — and even forms of birth control — into “the legal equivalent of homicide.” While consistently faltering in Colorado, it seems the Personhood movement has a firm grip on Alabama, Mississippi, Georiga, Texas, Montana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and now — Louisiana.

Today, the Louisiana House will debate a bill that would make abortion “a prosecutable crime for doctors who perform” a constitutionally-protected service or prescribe drugs with the intent of ending a pregnancy. Originally planning to prosecute women as well, the bill — introduced by state Rep. John Labruzzo (R) — now allows for medical exceptions butno exception for rape or incest. Labruzzo, who once suggested sterilizing poor women to lower welfare costs, was joined by a Personhood USA lawyer in a recent committee hearing to defend his radical efforts.

During the hearing, a fellow lawmaker noted LaBruzzo’s bill will have “unintended consequences when we do that broad brush” and questioned whether the bill would cause a “dramatic decrease on the abortion rate.” Sitting beside the Personhood lawyer, LaBruzzo dismissed her concerns and launched into a comparison between reproductive rights and drug abuse. To him, a woman who seeks an abortion is just like a heroin addict:

LABRUZZO: I can assure you if abortion is illegal, it will have a dramatic decrease in the number of abortions that take place. Now the opponents in the opposition argue that whether we make it illegal or not, people are going to get abortions. Well, we’ve illegalized [sic] murder and drugs for a long long time, and yet those crimes continue to take place. And it’s not our stance here to say that “just because people smoke pot and break the law or use heroin and break the law, then we should legalize it.” There are many who say we should. But we don’t agree, we don’t think so. We think it’s wrong and it’s best to keep it illegal…This is the pro-life bill. And I think you’d be in a difficult situation if you voted against this bill and tried to convince everybody that you are ardently pro-life.

Watch it courtesy of the Florida Independent:

But LaBruzzo is not the only right-wing representative in Louisiana’s anti-abortion game. Last week, a Senate committee passed state Rep. Frank Hoffman’s (R) bill that would further imperilwoman’s access to health care by allowing anti-choice health care providers to summarily reject providing any kind of abortion service even if the woman’s health is at stake. In 2009, Louisiana passed a law allowing any health care provider to refuse abortion-related services if it “violates his conscience to the extent that patient access to health care is not compromised.” Hoffman’s bill would eliminate “the qualifier that a medical professional’s decision cannot threaten patient’s right to care.”

As Planned Parenthood’s Julie Mickelberry noted, the bill could “go well beyond abortion” and end up denying women access to birth control, “both conventional prescriptions and emergency contraception.” Under this bill, gynecologists could refuse to prescribe birth control, pharmacists could refuse to fill legal prescriptions for such birth control. Such refusals, Mickelberry adds, would be particularly harmful to “women in rural areas with limited health care options or fro women, regardless of where they live, whose insurance allows limited office visits.”

VIDEO: Indiana GOP Rep Says Women Will Pretend To Be Raped To Get Free Abortions

By Tanya Somanader

Yesterday morning, the Indiana House considered an anti-abortion bill that “would put some of the tightest abortion restrictions in the nation into Indiana law.” Introduced by state Rep. Eric Turner (R), HB 1210 would make most abortions illegal after 20 weeks. Current law restricts abortions after the fetus is viable, generally around 24 weeks.

In an attempt to soften the blow this bill would land on Hoosier women, state Rep. Gail Riecken (D) introduced an amendment to exempt “women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm” from being forced to carry to term. Fearing this bill would “push women to the back alleys” for illegal abortions, Riecken pleaded with lawmakers to allow women to make the choice in these cases.

Turner then stepped to the podium and insisted that Riecken’s amendment would create a “giant loophole” for women. That loophole? Women “could simply say they’ve been raped”:

TURNER: With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.

I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.

Watch it:

Outraged by Turner’s allegation, state Rep. Linda Lawson (D) — who spent six years as a sex crimes investigator for the Indiana police — delivered an emotional rebuke. Describing her experience with both elderly and young children who had been raped, she forcefully informed Turner that “they don’t make it up.” “Women don’t make this up! My Goodness!” she exclaimed. “This is the state of Indiana!”

The House voted down Riecken’s amendment 42 to 54. The bill “now is eligible for a final vote in the House later this week. It then would move to the Senate, which earlier passed similar legislation aimed at abortion.”

New South Dakota law mandates three-day wait before abortions

By Stephen C. Webster

The Republican Governor of South Dakota signed a bill into law Tuesday, formally mandating that women in the state wait three days and visit with anti-abortion activists before undergoing a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.

With Gov. Dennis Daugaard's signature, South Dakota claims the title of having the longest mandatory waiting period for an abortion out of any other state in the nation. About half of the states require patients to wait 24 hours.

There is only one abortion clinic in South Dakota: the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) in Sioux Falls.

South Dakota's law was seen as part of a broader attack on Planned Parenthood by social conservatives acting at the state and federal levels.

The non-profit organization is perhaps best known for abortion services, thanks to media campaigns launched by its religious conservative critics. However, the vast majority of PPFA's activities focus on education, womens' health, disease screenings and pregnancy prevention.

To this effect, PPFA says that each year it plays a role in preventing over 600,000 unwanted pregnancies, and only three percent of their patients request abortion services. By contrast, figures show PPFA is ten times more likely to be helping prevent an abortion than carrying one out.

But in an exclusive interview with Raw Story, Republican state Sen. Al Novstrup, the South Dakota bill's primary sponsor, did not seem to know that. He even suggested that Planned Parenthood is akin to an abortion factory, ushering women in and putting them on a doctor's table without so much as a consultation.

He also suggested they have a financial incentive in carrying out as many abortions as possible, which is demonstrably false as similar procedures are astronomically more expensive when carried out at private hospitals. Most women pay between $500-$900 for abortion services through PPFA.

The 72-hour waiting period aside, the law will also require women to consult with one of the "crisis pregnancy centers" around the state, which are mainly run by anti-abortion activists.

Nebraska may permit ‘justifiable homicide’ in defense of the unborn

By Sahil Kapur

Legislation introduced in Nebraska includes a "justifiable homicide" clause that could be used in defense of a fetus, potentially offering legal cover for the killing of abortion providers.

The bill, LB 232, was put forth by Nebraska state Sen. Mark Christensen, who fiercely opposes abortion even in cases of rape, as Mother Jones first reported. It would allow any third party the chance to use self-defense as a legal justification for killing someone believed to be threatening the life of a fetus.

Although it may not have been Christensen's intent, critics fear that the language it could make way for legalized killings of abortion doctors, who are already frequent targets of death threats from anti-abortion activists.

"I think it opens the door to something unintended," said state Sen. Steve Lathrop (D), according to Mother Jones.

"I don't think you came in here intending to make those who provide abortions a target of the use of force," he was quoted as telling Christensen, "but I think it may unintentionally do that or at least provide somebody with an argument that they were justified in that."

"It is very disturbing that lawmakers who target abortion providers are again making national headlines," said Nancy Keenan, president of the pro-abortion-rights group NARAL. "Nebraska lawmakers have the moral obligation to protect reproductive-health care professionals who are providing legal medical services to women. We call upon the bill's sponsor to insert language that explicitly protects abortion providers from violence."

Republicans in Iowa have introduced a similar measure, the Iowa Independent reports.

These episode are the latest in a series of controversial anti-abortion legislation Republicans have pushed in several states and on a national level. A similar but somewhat narrower measure wasintroduced in South Dakota recently, only to be stripped after controversy erupted.

House Republicans have also come under fire in recent weeks for proposing national legislation that would redefine rape as it relates to abortion coverage (the language was later amended), as well as a bill that could allow hospitals to refuse abortions to a woman even if her life was in danger.

The House last week approved a measure that would strip government-sponsored family planning funds from Planned Parenthood, which provides a variety of health care services, including abortion.

GA GOP Rep. Would Force Women To Prove Miscarriage Happened Naturally Or Face Felony Charges

By Zaid Jilani

Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) has made a name for himself by introducing far-right extremist bills. He has introduced legislation barring the statefrom requiring vaccinations, eliminating income taxesand replacing them with nothing, and requiring state taxpayers to only pay in gold or silver.

Now, he has introduced what may be his most offensive and extreme bill yet. Last week he unveiledHB 1, which would, as the parenting blog Babble explains, “require proof that a miscarriage occured naturally.” If proof could not be provided, the mother could face “felony charges”:

State Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia introduced a bill in his state last week that, if enacted, would require proof that a miscarriage occurred naturally. If a woman can’t prove that her miscarriage–or spontaneous abortion–occurred without intervention, she could face felony charges.

According to WebMed, the overall miscarriage rate in the United States is 15-20 percent. The Mayo Clinic estimates that the “the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn’t developing normally.” If Franklin’s radical legislation were to be enacted, it could mean that as many as a fifth of pregnant Georgian women would be forced to have their miscarriages reviewed by the government — the bill suggests creating a county registration list for fetal deaths — which would be a dangerous and unprecedented intrusion into their private lives.

M.C.L comment: The pro-life movement in this country are a sick joke, these people want force pregnancies but no support to help these raise these children. Don't believe me ask a right to lifer what he or she thinks about welfare or government programs like free school breakfast or lunch.