Surprise! That New Planned Parenthood ‘Sting’ Video Was Deceptively Edited

laurenvauren:

Militantly anti-abortion rights group Live Action sure acted like it had exposed some big-time fuckery in its latest Planned Parenthood hidden camera sting operation. From a casual observer’s perspective, the sting captured what appears to be footage of a Planned Parenthood employee enthusiastically endorsing sex-selective abortion for a woman who claimed that she didn’t want another baby girl. But this edition, like every other undercover sting video Live Action has ever produced, was edited heavily, omitting key moments in the interaction and artificially making Planned Parenthood look artificially bad. I’m shocked!

Not that the original sting video Live Action released was that damning to begin with — a swift response statement from Planned Parenthood clarified that employees of the family planning organization are to follow a specific protocol in sensitive situations like the one presented by the Live Action actor, and that the employee featured in the video didn’t follow protocol.

Regardless, the employee did do a few things that weren’t included in Live Action’s final cut. For one thing, the employee asked the pregnant woman if they’d considered adoption instead of abortion. She also declined to give credence to tests that purport to help couples determine the sex of the fetus early in pregnancy. She also asked the woman if she was sure, 100% sure, that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy. When the Live Action actress asked the Planned Parenthood if there was a specific doctor she’d recommend to perform a sex-selective abortion, the Planned Parenthood employee said she didn’t know of any provider who specifically specialized in sex selection.

Read the informative article about the supposed “sting” operation here. 

Whaat? Live Action - blatantly lying? I never thought I’d see the day.

(via )

Anti-abortion bill gains traction in House, but falls short of passage

stfuconservatives:

shortformblog:

• yeah… Today, the House of Representatives voted 246-168 in favor of a bill that would make it illegal for doctors to perform abortions if the sole motivation for the abortion is dissatisfaction with the gender of the fetus.
• but… The bill, nicknamed PRENDA (for Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act), was brought up under a suspension of House rules, thus requiring a two-thirds majority for passage. It was thirty votes shy of that, so it didn’t pass. source

» For and against: The bill’s sponsor, Trent Franks, claims that America is “the only advanced country left in the world that still doesn’t restrict sex-selective abortion in any way.” But Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowski voted against the bill, saying that it ”includes a provision that would allow a women’s husband or parents, by merely alleging that an abortion is because of gender, to seek injunctive relief to prevent the doctor from performing abortion procedures.“ 

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Bolded for emphasis. It was a bill that allowed people other than the pregnant person to prevent them from getting an abortion. They just did it under the guise of “we’re protecting girl babies!!!” Sex-selective abortion happens in America, but not at a statistically significant rate. We don’t need a law to restrict it, and we certainly don’t need a law that pretends to restrict it while actually punishing pregnant people.

(via stfuconservatives)

New Video Attack on Planned Parenthood Stokes Sex-Selective Abortion Panic →

On Tuesday, anti-abortion activist Lila Rose’s group Live Action released a highly edited “undercover sting” video that claims Planned Parenthood is facilitating gender selective abortions.

Live Action claims U.S. census data and national vital statistics illustrate sex-selection is a growing problem in the United States but MediaMatters points out Centers for Disease Control data from 2008 that says 91.4% of abortions were performed before the 13th week of pregnancy, before gender is identifiable.

The following is a statement by Akiba Solomon, Colorlines.com’s gender reporter and columnist:

This sneak attack brought to you by Live Action’s Lila Rose (the female James O’Keefe) dovetails with tomorrow’s House vote on HR3451, the so-called Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA). To understand the timing of this video, lets examine the bill.

HR3451 claims to address the rising “sex-selection industry” and cites gender-based abortion tourism by “citizens of other countries.” As evidence of the “growing threat” of sex-selective abortion, the bill also cites a study by Columbia University economists who analyzed 2000 census data for U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents. Because sons outnumbered daughters, the economists concluded that their mothers must have practiced sex-selective abortion. This evidence is thin as hell, but PRENDA authors claim that “it strongly suggests that some Americans are exercising sex-selection abortion practices within the United States consistent with discriminatory practices common to their country of origin, or the country to which they trace their ancestry.”

Taken together, the bill and video are part of the same old right wing attempt to criminalize abortion under the mantle of equal rights and stoke white population anxiety. Instead of using the black genocide trope, PRENDA employs Yellow Peril dog whistles. The video supports this race-baiting legislation.

Live Action and PRENDA supporters are concern trolls. If they were, in fact, concerned about the lives of girls, they would focus on policies that support, say, living wages, jobs, affordable health care, quality public education and safety from gender-based violence rather than ginned up threats of sex-selective abortion.

Live Action isn’t very good at being sneaky about their “stings.” Planned Parenthood knew what they were doing weeks ago.

I just don’t know how you can claim to be working in people’s best interests when your primary strategy is (badly) lying to them.

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

Planned Parenthood Worries It's The Target Of New Undercover Sting →

According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more “hoax visits” over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she’s having a girl.

While patient privacy laws prohibit Planned Parenthood from offering specific details about the visits and where they occurred, Cooney told The Huffington Post that the incidents are so unusual and so similar to each other that they have raised concerns among the organization’s executives that the visits are being recorded as part of a concerted anti-Planned Parenthood campaign.

“For years opponents of reproductive health and Planned Parenthood have engaged in secret videotaping tactics with fictitious patient scenarios and selective editing in an attempt to promote misinformation about Planned Parenthood and our services,” Cooney said. “As with the prior instances, we anticipate that once again this group, likely in coordination with a broad range of anti-abortion leaders, will soon launch a propaganda campaign with the goal of discrediting Planned Parenthood, and, ultimately, restricting women’s health.”

If anti-choicers are on the right side, you have wonder why they rely so heavily on manipulating and outright lying to their supporters. No matter what Planned Parenthood employees say, Live Action will distort it to fit their message - that Planned Parenthood is the real perpetrator of the war on women*, not those who work tirelessly to restrict access to health care and information, and harass and terrorize health care providers, patients, and activists.

*Though it’s called a war on women, the propaganda, lies, and legislation affect everyone with the ability to become pregnant.

Half Aborted: Why do "reductions" of twin pregnancies trouble pro-choicers? →

swtmommy:

badwolfcomplex:

“To pro-lifers and hardcore pro-choicers, this queasiness seems odd. After all, a reduction is an abortion. If anything, reduction should be less problematic than ordinary abortion, since one life is deliberately being spared. Why, then, does reduction unsettle so many pro-choicers?”

As a pro choice, here is my view on this.

abortion to me is only a good choice if the future life of the baby is to be chaotic and unhealthy. In the case of twins, if a mother can care for ONE baby, she should be able to accept the second. It’s either “you go through with it” or you don’t…. We’re not PRO ABORTION. we’re pro CHOICE. We let women decide what’s best for the baby and themselves, but refusing one of the twins and asking or an abortion just for ONE baby is exactly like having an abortion for the hell of it or as a contraception method

AKA not acceptable. Even as a pro choicer, we’re not okay with the idea of abusing abortion. We’re with the idea of what’s best for one AND the other, not just the mother’s convenience.

 If the “we” doesn’t apply for some readers, switch it with “I”

I trust people to know what they can handle. If they only prepared for one child, they should have the right to have just one child. If they can’t afford more than one child, they shouldn’t be forced to have more than they can feed and house. If they don’t have time for twins, I trust them to know that. One baby is very different from two, three, and four babies. You’d think that’d be obvious, but from the responses I’m seeing from some pro-choicers, it apparently is not.

“I am tired of hearing that people have the right to safe, legal abortion until….until it makes me feel uncomfortable or it conflicts with what I would do personally…If you call yourself pro-choice, how about you be just that. Celebrate choice and let the person who has the pregnancy decide what [ze is] going to do and why [ze is] going to do it, and keep your opinions about it to yourself.” - Abortioneers

(via petitmonstreraphael-deactivated)

Where Are the Feminists Now? →

beccafrench:

Remember me? 

New post on the new blog! 

Uh…working to dismantle the patriarchy that contributes to the favoring of boys over girls?

We’ve been over this, people.

Under My Roof: The Supremacy of a Woman's Choice →

subtectummeum:

I’m reading an article called “Unnatural Selection” by Mara Hvistendahl in the August 2011 issue of Psychology Today. It’s not available online as far as I can tell, but look at it in a store sometime. In the article, Indian physician Dr. Puneet Bedi is interviewed about sex-selective abortion in…

Your first mistake was reading Psychology Today.

But seriously. Abortion is the symptom, not the sickness. The sickness is sex-selection (or more generally, patriarchy), and the symptom is abortion. The culture rewards parents for having boys and punishes them for having girls in a multitude of ways. For example, girls who marry must have a dowry; boys who marry receive that dowry (or their families do).

The Economic Rationale for Sex Selection

(Mara Hvistendahl also never recommended outlawing abortion. She is, in fact, pro-choice; however, other people are interpreting her writings to mean that abortion is the main issue.)

Jezebel wrote an article on the issue you might find interesting.

Here is the Library of Congress’ summary of the issue.

"For if “choice” is the moral imperative guiding abortion, then there is no way to take a stand against “gendercide.” Aborting a baby because she is a girl is no different from aborting a baby because she has Down syndrome or because the mother’s “mental health” requires it. Choice is choice. One Indian abortionist tells Ms. Hvistendahl: “I have patients who come and say ‘I want to abort because if this baby is born it will be a Gemini, but I want a Libra."

Unnatural Selection (via almonds-and-cherries)

Choices don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s very naive to think they do.

(via almonds-and-cherries-deactivate)

voidstuff said: is abortion what they’re suggesting????? i think there is (really expensive) technology now that can let you choose which gender you want your baby to be…

jmepie:

No, abortion is what caused the shortage in the first place because countries like China and India don’t like girls.

The article is explaining how bad this selection has become, basically, so let’s not bring that technology to China and India. Although I suppose if they’re going to be doing it anyway, choosing the sex beforehand is better than aborting a fetus because it’s female.

Abortion is often a symptom of a problem. In the US, the problems are lack of education, lack of resources, rape, etc. In other countries, it’s because boys are valued over girls. Those are the problems we should be addressing. Starting from the tail-end will either get you nowhere, or somewhere you really don’t want to be.

You can’t really choose the sex of an embryo/fetus that is already developing, FYI. All those techniques involve IVF or strategies like timing of intercourse, diets, supplements, and positions. I don’t know if that’s what you were suggesting, but I see a lot of anti-choicers throwing out “solutions” like this without doing any research into what they actually involve.

(via morningatmywindow-deactivated20)