The Roe Effect Hits Seattle Public Schools

The abortion regime in this country will eventually fall because it has sown the seeds of its own destruction. The "Roe Effect" is the theory that "abortion depletes the next generation of liberals and eventually makes the population more conservative." Abortion also depletes the next generation of workers, taxpayers, and school children. Now comes this story about the increase in private school enrollment and decrease in public school enrollment. But that's not the whole story.

Private schools are likely to see similar dips in enrollment, said Seattle Public Schools analyst Rachel Cassidy. We just have fewer children in the city than we have in the past.

After all they've done to promote abortion and Planned Parenthood I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for the Seattle Public Schools or the teachers' union.

The Petri Dish That is Seattle

The headline in The Stranger says it all -- "NARAL Screws up". Sounds like NARAL's July Screw Abstienence party was too much for even some of NARAL's board members.

Apparently they do have their standards. Michele Cotner, 60, a former board member from Vancouver, said "I wasn't comfortable with the messaging." She doesn't have a problem with abortion but they better not mess-up the marketing.

Cotner thinks "NARAL's focus needs to be on preventing unwanted pregnancy rather than on abortion." I don't know how Miss Cotner expects NARAL to stay in business if there aren't any "unwanted" children to abort. Doesn't she know the "preventing unwanted pregnancy" line is a red herring to draw attention away from the reality of what abortion does and convince the public that NARAL is "responsible." You'd think someone who was on NARAL's board would be a little more sophisticated in her understanding of NARAL's mission -- they help sell abortion not birth control.

Cotner also complains that Washington NARAL represents the whole state and the "Screw Abstinence" party theme doesn't play well outside of Seattle. She's got to know that most of the abortions performed in the state are done in King County and, I would suppose, that NARAL's biggest contributors live in that county. They are going to be somewhat beholden to Seattle's abortion businesses.

Cotner's comments and The Stranger article correctly highlight the pro-abortion attitude of the Seattle abortion community. There is in fact a division that is occurring within NARAL and among traditional abortion supporters. Seattle's abortionists and supporters believe abortion is good for women's health and a neutral choice equivalent to child birth. The Hillary Clinton wing sees abortion as a "sad and tragic choice" and would probably prefer to keep Seattle's abortion cheerleaders off the front page.

Seattle's most vocal abortion cheerleader has got to be Marcy Bloom of Aradia Women's Clinic. When asked on John Carlson's show earlier this year about whether there was any circumstance underwhich an abortion shouldn't be performed, Miss Bloom couldn't come up with a single one. Another statement in this 2001 interview shows the moral relativism of the pro-abortion side of the pro-choice movement, "It [abortion] is a loving choice, the choice of an abortion. It is also a loving choice to have a baby. They are both loving choices."

Seattle is a Petri dish. Too bad the bacteria being grown is so harmful to the women of Washington state.

Summer School

Seeing as they found the time to protest a crisis pregnancy center it would appear that some of the young ladies at Franklin High School in Seattle have too much time on their hands. According to an article in The Stranger about the event, part of their problem with Life Choices and other crisis pregnancy centers is that they "falsely tell women that abortions increase the risk of breast cancer..." We'd like to propose that these students take on a research project, summer school if you will, that would be very informative -- Get to the bottom of the abortion-breast cancer link.

They might want to start here: The Coalition on Abortion / Breast Cancer

Required reading:
DEEP SIXED? The 2000 China Abortion/Breast Cancer Study That National Cancer Institute Funded But Really, Truly Seems To Not Want Anyone To Know About …

The students can use all the NARAL and Planned Parenthood citations they want but the final report should be 5 double-spaced pages and should answer the question--Is there a link between abortion and breast cancer? We will post a link to your report and allow our readers to critique your work.

What is Mark Trahant Talking About?

Editorials like this are a large part of the reason this blog was started. The combination of ignorance and misinformation contained in this one editorial on the issue of abortion continues to reinforce our opinion that we will get neither honest debate nor truthful information about abortion from the Seattle MSM.

Mark Trahant the editor of the PI editorial page doesn’t seem to know what he's talking about when it comes to abortion. He certainly doesn't understand the history of the abortion debate when he says “we haven’t had a thoughtful debate” about abortion. Thoughtful debates did happen prior to Roe in legislatures around the country. So much so that 23 states (including Washington) had laws legalizing abortion to one degree or another. We could go back to having the thoughtful debates Mr. Trahant seems to want if the court would overturn Roe.

Mark Trahant says “Even this current Supreme Court barely supports Roe and has chipped away at the decision”. Oh really? Where would the evidence for that be? In Washington state approximately 25,000 abortions were performed last year out of about 1 million-plus nation-wide. If the court has somehow "chipped away" at the scope of Roe is has had little effect on the availability of abortion. There are effectively no limitations on abortion in this country because the Supreme Court hasn’t allowed any, not even a ban on partial birth abortion. That doesn’t sound like “chipping away” to us.

Does Mark Trahant even understand the Constitution, the role of the courts, and the forces that gave us Roe? He says “We want the court to take the heat” and “We want the court to make the decision.” No we don’t. The American people actually like constitutional democracy and law making in the hands of the people and that’s what we had before certain groups took the abortion debate to the court because they had lost in the state legislatures. Contrary to what Mr. Trahant says the court could have decided “not to decide” by telling the plaintiffs in Roe that the Constitution was silent on abortion and that legislature was the place to change the law – not the courts.

Worst of all Mark Trahant doesn’t seem to understand the specifics of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton, and continues to perpetuate the urban legend that the majority of Americans support NARAL’s vision of abortion rights. These two Supreme Court cases legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, or no reason at all—That’s why they call it “abortion-on-demand.” Mr. Trahant doesn’t reference a specific poll in his editorial but looking at a CBS poll from last week, 59% of the respondents think Roe v Wade was “a good thing”, but only 25 % of the people think abortion should be legal in “all cases.” Why the disconnect between these two numbers? —Because most people don’t understand the scope of Roe and Doe and believe they only legalized first trimester abortions. Poll after poll continues to misinform the public about Roe in their questioning. Besides if most Americans support NARAL and abortion rights then abortion-rights activists have nothing to fear from the overturning of Roe. With the majority of Americans supporting abortion as Mr. Trahant claims they can just pass laws legalizing abortion in their state.

Mr. Trahant seems completely ignorant of the arguments against Roe v Wade and the parallels between the debates over slavery and abortion. In response to Slade Gorton’s comments that other countries have had a “peaceful resolution (of the abortion debate) throughout the political process", Mr. Trahant says that we haven’t had that or a “thoughtful debate” because “we made the courts do it for us...” What Slade Gorton means is that other countries got to actaully vote on their abortion laws, but this point alludes Mr. Trahant. Doesn’t he understand that this lack of democracy when it comes to our abortion laws is what drives much of the opposition to Roe, not that some unknown "we" kicked it over to the court because we didn't want to deal with it. He then makes the comment that “…Roe did not convince the entire country...that a woman has a right to chose. ” How could it when it contains so many serious constitutional, moral, and factual failings? Roe didn’t settle abortion any more than Dread Scott settled slavery.

Mark Trahant laments the lack of debate and consensus on abortion but seems to believe the Supreme Court, the least deliberative and least democratic of our three branches of government, is the proper venue for this. Doesn’t he know that the people who are fighting to take it out of the court don’t “want the court to make the decision” and never wanted it there in the first place. They want to debate and find consensus in the legislature where it properly belongs.

Washington State Democrats for Life

The newly formed group, Washington State Democrats for Life, have regularly scheduled meetings in Seattle, held on the second Tuesday of each month, from 6:30-7:45pm, at the Seattle Public Library branch, 5009 Roosevelt Way NE. For more information, contact Casey at (206)234-5611 or email him at: democratsforlife@gmail.com

The August 9, 2005, meeting will feature the National Democrats for Life Vice President, Carol Crossed.

On Tuesday, September 13, DanKennedy, CEO of Human Life of Washington will be a guest speaker.

Finally someone is bringing some sanity back to the democratic party.

(Thanks Human Life of Washington for this information)

The Senator from Planned Parenthood

Our junior Senator, Maria Cantwell, or as I prefer, the Senator from Planned Parenthood, has released a press release with her reaction to the nomination of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court:

July 19th, 2005

Cantwell on U.S. Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell's (D-Wash.) statement follows below:

“The opportunity to replace Justice O'Connor, who for over 20 years on the Supreme Court brought the nation together and respected and preserved the Constitution, is one of this President's and this Senate's most important roles.

"Tonight, the President has selected Judge John Roberts of the D.C. Circuit. While I am disappointed that President Bush did not choose one of America 's many well-qualified female jurists to replace Justice O'Connor, I look forward to the debate before us. I will be examining Judge Roberts' record to see whether he is competent, ethical and has a judicial temperament worthy of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

"I will be especially interested to discuss Judge Roberts' views on the right to privacy as it exists in the U.S. Constitution. In a 1991 case Judge Roberts argued that Roe v. Wade ‘was wrongly decided and should be overruled' ( Rust v. Sullivan , 1991)."

Cantwell is on the Senate Judiciary Committee and from the moment she arrived in 2000, critics have seen her as a puppet of the abortion industry. She is not just a 100% reliable vote for Planned Parenthood, but also has attacked Committee witnesses, including Bush administration nominees, for their commitment to the sanctity of human life.

It's Roberts

After this morning's fake-out that the president had appointed Edith Brown Clement to the Supreme Court we find out that the real appointment is John G. Roberts, who currently sits on the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Here is some of the misinformation we can expect to hear from Washington NARAL, The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly, The Seattle Times, The Seattle PI in the coming months:

• The appointment of Roberts puts abortion rights in Washington at risk.

Fact: By this I suppose they mean that his confirmation to the court would lead to the overturning of Roe v Wade and would in turn make abortion in Washington illegal. First of all, it will take one more pro-Roe judge (Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg) to retire with none of the anti-Roe justices retiring before there would be a chance of overturning Roe. Second of all, overturning Roe v Wade would simply return abortion decision making back to the states where the people could decide how they want to regulate abortion. Third, Washington has repealed all of its pre-Roe statutes. In the event Roe is overturned abortion would remain legal in Washington state through all nine months of pregnancy. This was codified in 1992 through Initiative Measure No. 120.

• An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 women will die annually from illegal abortions if Roe is overturned.

Fact: The number of 5,000 to 10,000 women dying from illegal abortions was first brought into the abortion debate by Bernard Nathanson and the other founders of NARAL to capture the attention and sympathies of the media and enlist their help in the legalization of abortion. He has addmited to this publicly many times. Furthermore there's no documented proof of this claim. In fact, the statistics point to less than 1,000 deaths a year. Even Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe was forced to recant her use of this number.

Who knows what else they'll come up with.

$11 Million Industry

Remember "Safe, Legal and Rare"? The only part of that phrase we've maintained is the "legal" part. I don't think anyone imagined that it would actually turn into an industry with approximately 50% of it's funding coming from the taxpayers of Washington state.

The Medical Assistance Program recently sent out its annual figures on the State of Washington's Pregnancy-Related Expenditures (1988 - 2004) and courtesy Human Life of Washington here are the facts on state funding of abortion:

In 2004, statistics for DOH showed 27 abortions at an average cost of $353, reaching a total of $9,542 for the procedures paid for by the state. For DSHS and MAA, there were 14,165 abortion procedures covered at an average cost of $494, reaching a total of $7,001,498. The total from the two agencies combined in 2004 amounts to 14,192 abortion procedures costing the taxpayers of this state $7,011,040.

That's a little over $7 million that went to abortion providers in Washington State in 2004. This doesn't even account for the funds Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider in the world) receives from King County, the City of Seattle or the federal government.

One other thing to note is that while the state paid for 14,192 abortions last year the actual number of abortions in the state was about 25,000. That means abortion is roughly an $11 million a year business in this state with the taxpayers providing over half of all the money for this procedure. Is there any other industry in the state that is subsidized to such a degree?

Memo to the Washington State Department of Health

One of the arguments in favor of legalized abortion came from doctors working in emergency rooms across America who saw injured and maimed women after attempting self-abortions or submitting themselves to illegal abortions.

Well, it turns out legal abortion isn't any safer or better than illegal abortion and the injuries are just as severe. An ER nurse posted these comments on Sound Politics last week in response to NARAL's Sc##w Abstinence party.

I cannot begin to recount how many young women (and some older ones too) have come into my ER for suicidal ideation because they had an abortion.

Don't anyone dare be so naive and stupid as to tell me that abortion is an easy and painless choice. None of the ladies I assessed were happy about the choice they made. They came with emotional damage, infections, hemorrhaging, and overwhelming self-loathing and anger.

Anyone care to guess the last time I had a patient who was suicidal, suffered from sepsis, or was bleeding to death out of her vagina because she practiced abstinence?

Still waiting... anyone?

That's right. Never.

So don't presume to spout pro-abortion and anti-abstinence bullsh*t in my immediate vicinity. I've met enough human wreckage courtesy of NARAL and lanned Parenthood to have developed an overwhelming desire to smack the everlovin' s**t out of these people for what they've done to so many women.

You can argue about viability all you want. I don't care about viability. I care about what this is doing to our daughters and sisters.

I don't imagine that these complications from legal abortion ever make it to the Washington State Department of Health where they are supposedly monitoring the "quality of service" and reporting on complications from abortion in the state.