A teachable moment: Got pro-abortion lies? We’ve got answers.

If you scroll to the bottom of my articles, you’ll find an e-mail address next to my picture. Occasionally, I get messages from ideological opponents who are seeking a good-faith discussion. Those tend to be the exception, however; links to gay porn and e-mails riddled with caps-locked profanities are much more typical. For a while, I was receiving ads from a manufacturer of vibrators. Although I have no particular need for such a device at this time, online reviews do indicate that the company puts out a quality product.

I’ve also been placed on the mailing list for Rhrealitycheck.org. A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to go there and check out a comment from “HeilMary1,” who seemed to think pro-lifers are responsible for hiding the crimes of “pedophile priests” while working to “kick women into early graves.”

These remarks are no doubt offensive to many, but I did see a silver lining in them. After all, a rhetorical punch in the nose can rile people up and push them to action. So I politely asked HeilMary1 if she could convince other abortion supporters to sound like her, as it might help pro-lifers stay motivated. Apparently that didn’t go over well. I got a reply from someone called “Arekushieru,” who responded with the following:

Not being in the habit of taking this sort of thing lying down, I’ve decided to turn it into what President Obama likes to refer to as “a teachable moment” and address each allegation line by line. You may wish to take notes.

“Btw, most Pro-Lifers have come out in support of the VERY THINGS that HeilMary mentioned. Oopsies?“

Let’s take a look at those things, shall we? First off, there’s no evidence that Live Action has done anything to support sexual predators. However, as Cassy Fiano has pointed out,  the same can’t be said for the abortion industry. That was certainly the case in 2002, when California sex offender Gary W. Cross took his 13-year-old victim in for a late-term abortion. The girl was first brought to a Santa Clara County Planned Parenthood facility, which referred her to a San Francisco-area hospital. While hospital staff did abort her child, neither they nor anyone at Planned Parenthood alerted authorities to the fact that the child had been the victim of rape. According to court documents, the abuse resumed and continued for another 7 months.

Planned Parenthood staff in Ohio were found to have violated that state’s informed consent law after performing an abortion on a 14-year-old victim who had been sexually abused by her soccer coach. Again, Planned Parenthood failed to report the abortion, just as they were alleged to have done in the case of fellow Ohioan Denise Fairbanks. Ms. Fairbanks asserted that at 16, she was taken to Planned Parenthood for an abortion by her incestuous father. While Fairbanks claims to have informed clinic staff of the abuse, no action was taken, and she continued to be victimized.

Yet another Ohio case emerged in 2007. When John Blanks got his daughter pregnant after repeatedly raping her, he brought her to Planned Parenthood for an abortion. She later filed a lawsuit, accusing the abortion group of being complicit in the cover-up.

This behavior was repeated that same year on the East Coast. Middle-aged child abductor Adam Gault brought the Connecticut teen he had been abusing to a Planned Parenthood clinic after he managed to impregnate her. Planned Parenthood promptly aborted the victim’s child and then turned her back over Gault.

And then there’s the video footage that Live Action obtained showing Planned Parenthood staff at multiple locations who were willing to assist people claiming to be pimps. The most egregious offender, Amy Woodruff, offered to set up involuntary abortions on underage prostitutes who “don’t speak English” and “aren’t going to know what’s going on.” Watch all of the footage and count how many times she laughs – apparently there’s a lot of humor here that I, a dour right-wing conservative, just can’t seem to pick up on.

None of this should be surprising given that former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson and six other former employees wrote an open letter to Congress asserting that the group’s policies and procedures do little to protect abused women and girls. This all seems rather inconsistent with the claim that Planned Parenthood is  “empowering women.” Indeed, as I mentioned last year, Planned Parenthood appears to be in the business of helping others to control your body.

With regard to “putting women in early graves,” well, some people at Planned Parenthood are willing to ensure that females don’t even make it out of the womb. If you watch the video below, you’ll see someone who sounds perfectly OK with sex-selective abortion. And even if a little girl manages to emulate Giana Jessen or Melissa Ohden (two women who were born during botched late-term abortions), Planned Parenthood evidently wants another shot at her. In 2013, Planned Parenthood spokesperson Alisa Snow argued against a piece of Florida legislation aimed at  protecting surviving newborns.

Sex-Selective Abortion: Part 1 - Undercover in Texas

“Also, can you anti-choicers PLEASE be truthful for ONCE? We support both pregnancy and abortion as OPTIONS.”

Well, some of you tend to lean a lot heavier on the abortion option. You can check out this lovely exchange from Tucker Max’s self-referential best-seller, Assholes Finish First:

On a 2011 visit to the Sunshine State, Tucker remarked that South Florida resembled “a giant Planned Parenthood waiting room” in that it had “shitty design, slutty whores & no culture.” Improving Planned Parenthood’s aesthetics may have been why he tried to donate $500,000 to the group in 2012. After all, he spends a lot of time at their facilities, remarking that “[d]ue to the potent combination of my sexual recklessness and the slutty nature of some of the girls I have slept with, I have accumulated enough stories and anecdotes about abortion that they could name a Planned Parenthood clinic after me.”

And it’s not just Tucker; there’s an entire “bro-choice” movement that’s dedicated to pushing abortion as the first and only option. Writer Christian McQueen exemplified this view in a helpful article called “The 10 Slut Commandments.” Once he explained how to capitalize on a woman’s pain and insecurity, McQueen then pointed out that it is essential to convince “the slut” to get an abortion should she be so inconsiderate as to become pregnant on you. I must say that while I’ve spent some of the best years of my life on a college campus, I’ve never heard the invectives “slut,” “bitch,” “skank,” or “whore” used with as much relish or enthusiasm as I have from certain pro-abortion advocates.

“YOU support pregnancy as duty.”

That’s curious, because I can’t recall ever telling a female friend, family member, co-worker, romantic partner, elected official, bill collector, bounty hunter, zookeeper, or any other woman that she has a duty to get pregnant. However, there certainly are people who treat abortion as a duty, and they’re willing to impose deadly consequences if that duty isn’t fulfilled.

Canadian Roxanne Fernando was murdered in 2007 after she resisted her boyfriend’s pressure to have an abortion. Leah Diver was somewhat luckier: she survived being stabbed several times when her boyfriend couldn’t convince her to exercise “the right to choose.” Such violence seems to occur with great regularity: according to some studies, as many as half of all abortions are consented to under pressure. That’s why I’ve long said that when it comes to abortion, “choice” is a one-way street.

So there you have it: a point-by-point rebuttal. Hopefully, this will lead to a careful, well thought out re-examination of the issue…or it might just lead to more stuff like this: