Tag Archives: Planned Parenthood

national news, political news

He’s a poster boy for various causes

suspect

Robert Lewis Dear’s picture has been plastered all over the media of late with good reason.

He’s about to become a poster boy for a number of key debate points in our modern political environment.

Dear is accused of killing three people and injuring several others in that Friday shooting rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo. He’s going to court Monday to be arraigned.

Usually, someone accused of a high-profile crime gets to see his face related to one, maybe two, issues at once. Not so with this guy, Dear.

For instance.

  • He’s being discussed in the context of Planned Parenthood and women’s abortion rights. He told the cops “no more baby parts,” leaving authorities and the media to speculate that the shooting rampage was politically motivated. Is he a longtime anti-abortion activist?
  • Dear has been called a “domestic terrorist” who could become the face of non-Muslim, Anglo Americans who are just as prone to commit acts of terror as those evil foreigners seeking to sneak into the United States.
  • He carried a rifle into the Planned Parenthood building, which brings to mind the issue of gun control. Some will ask, “How did this guy obtain a gun so easily?” Ah, yes, the gun control debate will flare up once again.
  • And, finally, he might become the face of mental health treatment and the need to be on the lookout for those who are capable of committing such horrible crimes?

Wow! That’s four of them — four issues that, taken separately, all provide enough grist for friends to become foes in a heartbeat.

And to think that one man could be at the center of it all.

 

medical news, national news, political news

Fiery rhetoric produces more tragedy

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I believe it is fair to ask: Has the fiery rhetoric condemning Planned Parenthood resulted in the shooting deaths of three individuals at the hands of someone who has told police “no more baby parts”?

Three people died this week when a man opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Police arrested Robert Lewis Dear after a siege that lasted several hours. The motive was unclear immediately after Dear’s arrest. Then today he reportedly told police about the “baby parts” and how he wanted to prevent future harvesting of those organs from aborted fetuses.

Many of us have seen those videos taken at another Planned Parenthood clinic. It shows staffers discussing the harvesting of body parts. What has become known generally since then is that videos were edited heavily to portray gross indifference among the staffers.

And that — sad to say — triggered some of the rhetorical firestorm emanating from Congress and along the presidential campaign trail.

Many of the accusations leveled against Planned Parenthood were false. Federal law prohibits the selling of body parts “for profit.” Yet that’s what the accusers said Planned Parenthood was doing. There’s been no proof of profiteering, merely accusations.

Yet the rhetoric became stoked by politicians looking for sound bites, producing tremendous anger among many Americans. Sadly, much of that anger was based on false pretenses.

Now we have this. Someone has taken three lives and injured several other individuals.

I am acutely aware that the shooter will have defenders who say he is “righteous” in seeking to justice over the practice of abortion.

I have no intention of entering the abortion debate. I do intend to suggest that politicians seeking to express their own righteous indignation over medical procedures that in fact are legal need to consider the consequences of fomenting anger.

 

national news

These events never will become ‘normal’

suspect

I think I understand what President Obama said about the shooting rampage at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, about how they shouldn’t become “normal.”

Mr. President, we’ll know these things have become normal when the media stop covering them.

A gunman killed three people — including a brave Colorado Springs police officer — and injured several others. It’s not yet known precisely who — or what — was the target. Was it the Planned Parenthood clinic? Or was it something else?

We hope to find out … and soon.

The president also said “enough is enough” regarding gun violence. That, of course, is a given. It was enough long before this latest spasm of violence.

Robert Lewis Dear is now facing murder charges in connection with the shooting. It’s a testament to the hard work of the Colorado Springs Police Department that he was taken into custody.

Is this normal? Is this the kind of thing we should expect to occur?

Never. But we’ll know it’s all normal when no one pays attention.

I doubt very much that’s ever going to occur.

 

national news, Uncategorized

When is it not ‘domestic terrorism’?

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plannedparenthood109

As I write this brief blog post, a shooter has just been arrested by police in Colorado Springs, Colo.

He had been holed up in a Planned Parenthood clinic where he reportedly fired at clients fleeing the clinic once he opened fire.

The question now is this: Are we witnessing an act of “domestic terrorism”?

How about another query: Suppose this was occurring at a shopping mall, or an automobile lube shop, or at a convenience store. Would that be domestic terrorism as well?

My guess is that all those scenarios would constitute an act of domestic terrorism.

That it is occurring at a Planned Parenthood clinic, though, gives this situation the feel of added scrutiny, given that Planned Parenthood has been in the news of late and has become the object of considerable criticism for many years over its role in providing abortions for women.

I am glad to hear that the cops have arrested this shooter, taken him into custody. He now will be charged with whatever crime is applicable. I had feared it wouldn’t end that way.

Let’s hope for the best, which means the police can get some answers from the individual responsible for this frightening event.

He needs to answer the question: Why do this at a Planned Parenthood clinic?

 

national news, political news

Government shutdown looming … maybe

government shutdown

Oh, how I wish I could be as serene as some of the pundits out there about the prospects of a government shutdown in the wake of John Boehner’s stunning resignation.

The speaker of the House is leaving office at the end of next month. Between now and then Congress is going to vote on some funding issues that involve possibly the very issue of a government shutdown.

The TEA Party wing of Boehner’s Republican Party won big with the speaker’s resignation. He’s been battling the yahoos on the far right for years. He’s had enough, so he bailed.

That empowers the TEA Party types. It strengthens their hand with the new speaker, believed to be House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Does he want to wage war with the TEA Party faction? Hardly.

He might find it more difficult to resist them than his predecessor did.

Planned Parenthood is in the TEA Party sights. They think shutting down the federal government — which, by the way, does a lot of things for other people as well — is a good way to get back at the agency for what TEA Party lawmakers say is its callous disregard for human life; it’s the abortion thing, you know.

Government to shut down?

This kind of political hostage-taking is not in keeping with congressional responsibility. Given that so many of the TEA Party faithful in Congress are too young to have been around when the GOP tried this tactic before.

It blew up in their face. It will do so every time.

If only they’d realize the folly.

 

medical news, national news, political news

Don’t mess with Planned Parenthood, GOP

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PlannedParenthoodsign

What part of “Don’t Shut Down the Government” is the Republican caucus in Congress failing to understand?

Yet here we are yet again. Congress is threatening to shut down the federal government because some of its members dislike Planned Parenthood. The GOP caucus in Congress doesn’t believe that the federal government should fund Planned Parenthood because, they say, it provides abortion services to women who want to end their pregnancy.

Well, that’s just a small part of Planned Parenthood’s mission. As for abortion funding, Congress years ago approved a law — the Hyde Amendment — that banned federal money for abortion services, so the argument that the government funding of abortion falls flat.

The rest of Planned Parenthood’s mission? Oh, things such as exams designed to guard against cancer, contraceptive services … those kinds of silly things that help keep women alive and allow them to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

What’s more, we’re possibly treading into that minefield in which the government decides to deny government services and programs across the board that have nothing at all to do with Planned Parenthood.

Do these individuals in Congress forget what happens when the legislative branch acts in this petulant and ultra-punitive fashion? Do they not know how badly the public reacts when Congress does such a thing?

The public gets quite angry. At Congress. And, yes, at the those who belong to the party that run both legislative chambers. That would be the Republican Party.

A government shutdown is a fool’s errand.

If only the fools who comprise a significant segment of the majority party in Congress would just get the message.

 

medical news

Planned Parenthood video is grim; agency needs to survive

I’ll admit that the video showing the discussion of fetal tissue removal is grim in the extreme.

The video, shot surreptitiously in Colorado, is now being used to bludgeon Planned Parenthood over its head. Republicans in Congress want to defund the agency and are threatening to shut down the government this fall if a budget comes forward with money to help fund the agency.

Let us hold on a minute … or maybe two or three. I know my views on this subject are going to anger folks.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/01/big-labor-defends-planned-parenthood-calls-attacks-extremist-politically/

Mention the very words “Planned Parenthood” in places such as, say, the Texas Panhandle and individuals go apoplectic.

The agency “murders babies,” people say. Its leadership should be arrested, tried and convicted for crimes against the unborn, they contend.

The video that’s now becoming part of the GOP presidential field talking point agenda shows something that no one wants to see and/or hear; count me as one who dislikes hearing the audio. However, what’s transpiring in the video is legal. It’s also a tiny, infinitesimal part of Planned Parenthood’s larger mission — which is to provide medical counseling and advice for women. The advice covers far more than just terminating pregnancies. It involves screenings to protect against cancer or STDs and counseling for women who are considering an abortion.

None of this matters, though, to those who wish to use the video to make political hay.

Abortion remains — without question, in my view — the single most divisive domestic policy issue in the United States. However, as some prominent politicians have noted in the past, the aim ought to be to keep it legal, but make it as rare as humanly possible.

And do we need to use this video as a cudgel to batter the entire federal government? In my mind, the answer should be a clear-cut “no!”

I wish I’d never seen the video that’s become all the rage — and I mean “rage” in the pejorative sense. People are angry at its contents. I am disturbed by them, too.

However, let’s put this into some context and try to examine whether it represents all of Planned Parenthood’s mission.