The usual suspects peddle another bogus story
July 18, 2010 4:38 pm ET by Terry Krepel
If Fox News, The Washington Times, and Gateway Pundit are all telling you something is true, there’s a high likelihood that what they’re telling you it isn’t the full truth.
A FoxNews.com article asserted that “[t]he Obama administration is offering incentives to Kenya to approve a controversial new constitution that would legalize abortion for the first time.” This was followed by Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft claiming that Obama is “accused of illegally funding a pro-abortion referendum in Kenya,” using citing the highly biased LifeNews.com as his source. (Bonus: Hoft goes on to repeat the discredited claim that Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga is Obama’s “cousin.” Hadn’t heard that one in a while.) Then, in a July 16 editorial, The Washington Times asserted that the new constitution “explicitly allows a ‘trained health professional’ to snuff the life of an unborn baby at any stage of a pregnancy.”
As can be expected from this triumvirate, the story they are peddling is largely untrue.
The new Kenyan constitution does not legalize abortion, which is already illegal except to save the life of the mother. According to the Associated Press, what the new constitution does is allow a “trained health professional” to make the determination to allow an abortion when the life or health of the mother is endangered.
To argue that allowing a “trained health professional” to determine if a mother’s life or health is sufficiently endangered is the same thing as legalizing elective abortion is absurd.
Overstating one’s case in contradiction of the facts, as Fox News, Hoft, and the Times do, doesn’t exactly instill confidence that anything these folks have to say is true.
If we set the bar as low as something qualifying as absurd, on the right wing blowhards, we may as well take Fox and right wing talk radio off the air, and ban any right winger from blogging.
Hmmm sound pretty good to me.
What is absurd is the predictable clamor by mmfa to support anything that could increase the availability of abortions...rather than addressing the issues at hand.
The previous language on abortion stated, "Abortion is not permitted unless in the opinion of a registered medical practitioner, the life of the mother is in danger."
The proposal changes that to read, "Abortion is not permitted unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is a need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law."
The earlier version clearly stated that the decision was in the hands of a medical doctor but now it can be determined by the vague descriptor of any "trained health professional".
The earlier version clearly stated "the life of the mother" was required...but now is expanded to include the all expansive "health" of the mother...which begs for the explanation of what constitutes the health of the mother and how that will not increase the number of abortions.
Additionally, what are the "emergency treatments" that will provide for the abortion procedure?
And what about the provision of "permitted by any other written law"? That can easily be interpreted to mean that a constitutional amendment is no longer required to change abortion laws...that they can be changed by the simple enactment of new laws.
While mmfa has loudly and often supported the expansion of provisions allowing for abortion...and certainly their right...simply dismissing this issue as "absurd" without addressing the implications of the proposed changes is in a word...absurd.
Yeah, the mother's health: can't have that taking priority, now, can we? If the mother risks debilitating physical injury by continuing the pregnancy, hey, so be it as long as she's not dead, right? And if she doesn't have access to a registered doctor then she's just plain out of luck.
Or if the mother risks suffering depression and recurring headaches because of her pregnancy...see I can be just as vacuous as you with anecdotal whims.
If you believe that a debilitating injury is just cause for the abortion...then right it into the amendment. Leaving the amendment at simply the "health" of the mother just opens the door for abortion on demand...you know it and I know it.
Friend, we're talking about Kenya here. There are 3,000 cases of obstetric fistula a year, and a shortage of registered medical professionals to adequately treat the women who suffer from it. These are cases in which the pregnancy usually ends in stillbirth anyway, and then get to live highly circumscribed and secluded lives due to shame and sometimes stigma associated with incontinence. We're not just talking about depression (-- which, by the way, can be fatal, so I'm not quite sure why you're dismissing that--) but conditions with serious physical complications.
The thing to which this "opens the door" is placing an ounce of value on the lives and healths of women who become pregnant.
The "life of the woman" means she has to be in the process of dying or the medical professionals prognosticate that she will indeed die.
A woman's health, on the other hand, would be things like the recent case of a woman having to stop the cancer treatments because it would be bad for the foetus and her health suffering from a vigorously growing cancer was no reason to grant her an abortion.
It is amazing to me how many people think that women's health care decisions should be made by priests and legislators rather than health care professionals.