Monday, September 25, 2006
I Can See The Fnords!
So, let me see if I've got this straight: there are these things called "crisis pregnancy centers." These centers, usually run by pro-life individuals, masquerade as fully-functional family planning clinics, sometimes to the point of opening right next to Planned Parenthood centers. These centers, which are federally funded, exist mainly to do an end run around the possibility of the client aborting her fetus by any means necessary. Sometimes, this involves spreading damnably false information about abortion and breast cancer, fertility, and mental health. Other times, they perform "medical care" that seems questionably limited to sonograms. In a case in Indiana, the crisis pregnancy center told a girl to come back to the "other office" (read: the actual Planned Parenthood) for an appointment, only for her to find the police waiting for her, who'd been "informed" that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will. There are even tales of centers providing shelter to pregnant women until the date when they cannot legally get an abortion, after which they're turned out.
And now, one of these faux-family planning centers is suing an actual family planning center for "pretending" to be a crisis pregnancy center and "coercing" women into getting abortions. Just trying to follow and fully comprehend the logic behind this might result in transcendence to a higher plane of existence.
More seriously, though, as Amanda says, this is projectionist politics at its worst. The duplicitous, bullshit-spewing womb hijackers who occasionally launch campaigns of harrassment against young pregnant women are the victims here, and it's the honest to God fully-licensed doctors who are trying to pull the wool over women's eyes. It's like Bizarro World, only much less funny.
And now, one of these faux-family planning centers is suing an actual family planning center for "pretending" to be a crisis pregnancy center and "coercing" women into getting abortions. Just trying to follow and fully comprehend the logic behind this might result in transcendence to a higher plane of existence.
More seriously, though, as Amanda says, this is projectionist politics at its worst. The duplicitous, bullshit-spewing womb hijackers who occasionally launch campaigns of harrassment against young pregnant women are the victims here, and it's the honest to God fully-licensed doctors who are trying to pull the wool over women's eyes. It's like Bizarro World, only much less funny.
