My only criticism of PP -- and I mean only -- is that no one there should ever let down their guard. Clinic escorts know this. Doctors and nurses know this. Homegrown terrorists have followed them, harrassed their children, put up wanted posters online, and in several cases have murdered them.

People who work safely in PP offices should have it pounded into their heads before the ink is dry on their employment papers. Never let your guard down. Ever.

You'd think they would have learned by now, after so many attacks--Constant vigilance!

Can't assume, and it's dangerous to demand they know defense tactics. Dangerous because that attitude leads to blaming them when something happens--"they could have prevented it IF __________ Blah blah, fill in the blank.

No. That isn't reasonable and doesn't help anyone in real life.

It's just so frustrating seeing a good organization under attack. But I should have found a better way to express my thoughts. I certainly didn't mean to imply they were to blame for not seeing the hit job coming.

Those were some of the dicier years, I can tell you...

But my take is this: It IS reasonable to expect that there is always, always a potential threat from people who used to kill doctors until federal legislation got some teeth into preventing it. They will do anything. Given that, perhaps a training that the national organization can offer to affiliates on handling such discussions about fetal tissue donations would be in order.

I can tell you that when I worked at PP locally, I never heard any staff member or doctor talk disrespectfully about their work. In fact, the clinic staff members were some of the most dedicated people I have ever known. I have always felt it was an honor to be "in the field" at that time...

It's part of the right's incessant attempts to "defund the left" -- by which they mean destroying any liberal source of either money or influence. The unions are their biggest target, but meanwhile they'll take anything they can get.

Weakening progressive influence through the universities, either by funding conservative initiatives or by making professors afraid to speak out by eliminating tenure is another of their tactics. (See, for example, Scott Walker's attacks on the state universities in Wisconsin.)

The project started in the Reagan years as a kind of spinoff of the Heritage Foundation but it's gathered momentum in recent years and has been far too successful.

And we see the results today, sadly.

...after the videos were proven fraudulent.

These guys can score enough points with a Fox-frenzy, the truth-be-damned.

It's part of that Sister Soujah strategy, I guess -- or maybe a vestige of the McCarthy days. But Republicans almost never apologize for anything, while Democrats not only apologize but gladly execute their own allies.

Which is why it's important to stand with Planned Parenthood now.

and a former pastor of mine railed on it. didn't expect him to do that. smh. saying the days of Planned Parenthood are finally finished forever. Except since PP is mostly donated and operating legally it'll continue.. The bigger question is why are they do darned against birth control?? Which banning it causes abortions.

Acorn was a group that helped people in poverty vote. Those poor people usually voted Democratic. Obama signed their death warrant. Later it was determined it was an unconstitutional law. But it was too late. Acorn was dead and the Democratic leadership went along with it.

where he asks - why is this on the editorial page instead of being a front page NEWS report?

NYTimes did have a long story yesterday on David Daleiden and his tiny but terrible tax-free organization that uses lies and deceptions to attack Planned Parenthood and women's health care. The Republican crazies and a lot of the media have risen up in wrath to defund Planned Parenthood but not many have defended the work the do. So I am glad to see the Times editorial today.

Our local paper Boulder Daily Camera published one of the most despicable editorial cartoons I've ever seen, by Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle, depicting Planned Parenthood as Frankenstein. I wrote a letter which was published today:

I was astonished and outraged Monday morning (July 20) to see the ugly editorial cartoon in the Camera drawing Planned Parenthood as an evil Frankenstein. I can't imagine why the Camera would publish this, but you owe an apology to Planned Parenthood and the progressive people of Boulder who support it.

The video about use of fetal tissue was made undercover and selectively edited by a right-wing radical "non-profit" to further their political agenda and has been discredited. Medical research using fetal tissue has benefited all of us, Planned Parenthood has not profited from it, and women choosing to have abortions can legally donate fetal issue.

The self-righteous right-to-lifers know that abortions are a very small part of Planned Parenthood's health care services and that abortions have greatly decreased by teaching and providing contraceptive care. I do not see them voting to be taxed to feed, clothe, educate and give health care to suffering "born children; in fact they continue to elect leaders who cut funds for the social programs that are trying to support children and families. We know they do not have a plan for the millions of embryos and fetuses they cry for, while groups like Planned Parenthood live up to their names helping women and their families to make wise decisions and a better world for all our children.

Research from the use of fetal tissue is something as you say "has benefited all of us". It's another tool in our science toolbox, use it dammit!
I'm depending on science right now to stay alive. I'm not looking for sympathy and it's probably too late for me but it could help others. My friend's sister refereed to it as that "god damn insidious disease" I agree.

Scumbags.

Good for the Times.

It's all bad faith. Thus the gleeful lying and smearing.

They hate women. Want them punished for sex.

Painted a thousand different colors; wearing any convenient disguise; it's largely just evil.

No. They want women to be punished for being in control of their own sexual activity. There's a difference.

Otherwise, I agree with what you said.

there's gold in 'em dar fools. Pro-life people have been making a good living selling paranoid lies of abortion fantasies mixed with religion for years now. These criminals that did this latest stunt got big time press and praise. They are the new young generation planning to ride the gravy train of abortion lies. Do they believe the crap they sell. Who even knows anymore. All I know is the press needs to be more pro-active in calling them liars, and dishonest scam artists because that is what they are. There should be zero praise and total disgust for their tactics and lies. Instead they hide behind religion and cry victim. Scammers everyone single one of them.

Your statements are just as bad as the ones being made against Planned Parenthood.

I'm sorry, but every note from every anti-abortion source focuses on hatred of women, not on the sanctity of life. Blaming and shaming them, demanding government literally force them to forego taking care of their own bodies, on the utterly false premise that a pregnancy is a "person."

At best, people who hate and believe their sexuality is an evil threat that must be contained, have convinced themselves that women are "murderers" for having the temerity to control their own reproduction.

And, no, also, is there the slightest equivalence between pointing that out, and the statements of deranged liars who suggest that Planned Parenthood, and organization whose primary impact is providing otherwise unavailable healthcare to millions of women, is mostly an "abortion clinic," or that, for God's sake, they are "selling baby parts."

Those things are insane, malicious lies, which require the people saying them to willfully avoid examining reality in an any kind of reasonable way. There is no, zero, absolutely no comparison between that behavior and not only sane, but family obvious conclusion that anti-abortion madness is simply an attack on women.

An innocent human being. Whether or not you feel they are justified in this belief is irrelevant. That is their actual belief, that a fetus is a fully-fledged human being, and that aborting a fetus is murder.

I know some of these people. The basis for their belief is not a desire to punish women for having sex -- that there are some people who feel that way is another topic -- but that they see abortion as murdering an innocent human being. Demonizing your opponents with false accusations is not helpful.

Put any of these people in a burning building with the choice of saving 70,000 frozen embryos in a cooler or their favorite hat, and only the hat would make it out alive.

To the extent people have convinced themselves that abortion is "killing a baby," or for one second placed the rights, safety, or health of a fetus above that of a pregnant woman, they have willfully rationalized a reprehensible urge to control women's sexuality into a nonexistent ethical question issue about "when life begins."

There are levels of things. Operation Rescue types and the various murderous fanatics they enable are full-on hateful misogynists. In the same boat are mainstream Republican politicians like Mike Huckabee and Paul Ryan, who calmly assert that there are circumstances under which a woman, regardless of whether a child has been impregnated by an abusive adult, or a woman has been raped, or a pregnant woman may die, may need to be subject to some kind of criminal consequences, depending on whether an abortion is "permissible."

And there are those who simply cannot be bothered to analyze their unsupportable belief that for one second they have the right to command a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, and so have wound themselves up to believe that there is some analogy between abortion and "killing a person."

People are responsible for the positions they take and the reasons they give for them. It is not possible to believe that women's bodies are subject to their approval, disapproval, or punishment out of a rationale that does not include the idea that women may be subjugated and abused as a result of having a reproductive system. Religion is not an excuse. "That's just how I feel" is insufficient. If you purport to punish and damage and inflict suffering on people, you need a reason. "Abortion is kind of like killing someone" is not a reason.

It's an excuse.

As far as "demonizing" anyone, the second you tell a woman that dealing with her own reproductive system as she needs is tantamount to "killing" someone, you've opened that can of worms yourself. If they want a polite conversation in which their motives are not impugned, they can quit calling medical procedures that are absolutely none of their business "murder."

. . . I have a member of my own family, a sister, who has deep concerns regarding abortion. She is not a religious fundamentalist and is certainly not a woman-hater. She is not a sexual prude. She believes strongly in family planning and birth control.l But what she is is a mother and grandmother, and retired primary school teacher. I suspect she has been 'propagandized' by some anti-abortion horror stories as well. But her opposition also seems to have solidified after watching her daughter's (planned) pregnancy, in which, due to preeclampsia, the baby had to be delivered at 26 weeks. (I'm happy to report that nearly 4 years later, she has a bright, happy, healthy granddaughter.) So there is a lot that has fed into her opposition to abortion, and it is not at all fair to simply dismiss her, and others like her, as women haters.

It's not a moral quandary as to whether you have the right to order a woman to give birth or not.

There are kinds of willful stupidity that are okay, and then there are the ones where people want a woman to perhaps die giving birth birth to a rapist's child.

If you find yourself sitting around contemplating whether, as anti-abortionists propose, we should conduct a criminal investigation to see whether a woman's miscarriage may have been "murder," or that a 12-yr-old just may have to die giving birth to the spawn of a child molester, you do not have "deep concerns." You (the hypothetical "you," not you the poster) are a dangerous fool with a distorted idea of your rights vis a vis other people's lives.

Edit: Look, this topic makes me angry. I am incredibly tired of the great levels of respect accorded to people who are pushing an agenda that would quite literally kill women. I have had it with the idea that, if we don't carefully watch them, women will "abort" a fully developed child moments from being born. That "abortionists" sell fetal body parts and trick women into making "a terrible mistake."

I understand that some -- and I would say less than the majority -- of those seeking to limit or ban abortion believe their ideas are in good faith; that there is a serious moral hazard to women making the same decisions they have been forced to make for all of history.

But they are beyond wrong, and every time we have acceded to this idea of good-faith "concerns," we find a new cheat. A new ban. A new demand for a new restriction. First it was "partial birth abortions," a dishonest name for a rare procedure typically employed only to save a woman's life. We gave them the benefit of the doubt that even though that entire notion is ridiculous, they "meant well."

So now look where we are. Forced counseling, with scripts for doctors to parrot. Forced ultrasounds. A nationwide push for shorter and shorter windows for abortion. An unending river of lies and pseudo-science, and no particular outcry when the lunatics on the fringe of this thinking -- and it's quite a broad fringe -- stalk, harass, and kill people over it.

I am beyond giving the benefit of the doubt at this point. I'm taking it and giving it to the women.

. . . I am saying that it is facile to characterize all who oppose abortion as women haters. People can and do oppose abortion (and I am not one of them, btw) for a variety of reasons. Now, if you want to say that some of these folks are refusing to see the full ramifications of their position, on that point I would fully agree. But please don't misrepresent what I did, in fact, say in my post!

far more early spontaneous abortions occur in the earlier months of pregnancy than we previously thought. The pregnancy simply doesn't progress in the earliest weeks and is "aborted" in what the woman accepts as a menstrual period.

And, without exception all of them, including the women, are motivated solely by hatred of women. You state that for every single one of them, given the choice between saving seventy thousand embryos and a hat, all, without exception, would save the hat.

You are the one demonizing your opponents. You say that they are either duped or acting in bad faith. No, the FACT is that there are many -- indeed, probably a majority -- abortion opponents who genuinely believe that a fetus is an innocent human being. If one believes that, then abortion can only be seen as murder.

That is a false and insanely slanderous premise than cannot come from an honest place.

And yes, every one of the people who would call a woman in that position a murderer would save the hat. And all of them hate women to say or think or claim to believe that. It is not possible to equate this thing that women have dealt with, by necessity, forever, with killing someone.

It is not possible to suggest women should be forced to give birth under any circumstances, or placed under criminal investigation, trial, or imprisonment over whether their miscarriage might be have been "on purpose" without an utter disregard for the humanity of women.

They may tell themselves differently, but if it were their child pregnant by a molesting relative; their wife or mother or daughter about to die like that woman in Ireland, they would turn on a dime. They would insist on the abortion and think nothing of their stunning hypocrisy. They take the fake moral stance they claim only because they assume they will never be in a position in which it really matters.

I give pregnant women the benefit of the doubt. I think when they and their doctors determine they need this procedure, they should have it, and no one else has a single thing to say about it, period.

To any who suggest we should strap women to gurneys and force them to give birth, or throw them in jail for dealing with their own bodies as they see fit, I give none.

I spent well over a decade as a volunteer at a rape crisis center, and I have known women who were impregnated through rape or incest. These women, without exception, wanted abortions and felt that those who demanded that they not get them were punishing them for being the victims of horrific crimes. I agreed with them

That is entirely beside my point. There are people who genuinely believe that a fetus is an innocent human being, and for those people, abortion is murder. That you refuse to accept that these people exist, that they are either lying or deluded can only be called demonization on your part.

I suggest that you get off your high horse and accept that at least some of your opponents are sincere.

"There are people who genuinely believe that abortion is killing"

Are any of these people involved in the edited film montages of planned Parenthood?

Since it is entirely beside my point: That one can be sincere in believing that abortion is murder. I am not saying that I believe this, but I know people who do believe it and that they are honest in their belief.

See my response to DirkGently below.

Thanks for the thread, Mark.

:

on going after Planned Parenthood they don't even realize that they are accusing bio labs, medical researchers and medical research labs (many at universities) of COMMITTING a crime. The law not only PROHIBITS selling fetal tissue. It is ILLEGAL to BUY or knowingly RECEIVE material through a sales transaction. All these entities could be PROSECUTED for committing a felony. LIVEACTION, a pro-life group were producing and broadcasting the same kind of distorted UNDERCOVER interviews back in 2013. The pro-life movements has been accusing abortion providers back in the early nineties of selling baby parts and Congress back then did an "investigation". So where are the results. Congress has no intention to seriously investigate this beyond trying to de-fund PP. They already know (accept for a few of the stupid ones) that a legal investigation would involve subpoenas and auditing records for medical labs, hospitals, universities, bio med firms etc. It would upset thousands of private and public businesses and organizations and upset the entire medical community. Any serious investigate would cause the GOP too much heat. Laws regulating the acquisition and distributions of fetal tissue/organs requires completing and maintaining extensive records that are subject to audit to prove compliance with the law. PP is not doing anything that isn't documented to protect themselves. They have signed contracts with those entities they are providing tissue to, spelling out in detail what, when, how and what LEGAL reimbursement fees to be collected. They have their legal ducks in a row.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/media/extremists-trafficking-fetal-remains

I'm certain Mike Huckabee will use this as well!

Oh, well, it's not as if the GOP has any real issues to run on; may as well fire up the base!

They have sophistication, organization and enough money to do it. Worse, there is little effective opposition.