Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Rep. Tami Green Lies To Constituents on Pregnancy Center Bill, Evades Others

While some Democrats are responding to educational efforts and democratic pressure from constituents on HB1366, the bill that would essentially destroy the state's network of 56 "crisis pregnancy centers", others are resorting to desperate measures to justify their support for the unconstitutional legislation.


One such example is State Rep. Tami Green, who represents the Lakewood area of Pierce County, and sits on the House Health Care Committee.

We have made repeated efforts to contact her for answers to some simple questions. She is a co-sponsor of the bill, so one might expect her to have read it, and to be willing to answer questions from the public regarding her support for it.

We have asked her at least three times by phone, by voicemail, and by email how she planned to vote on the bill in committee.

No answer.

We asked if she would acknowledge that the bill was entirely the initiative of, and being pushed on behalf of, the unregulated abortion industry.

No answer.

We asked if she could cite any other examples in Washington State law of devastating civil penalties like the kinds in this bill.

No answer.

We asked if she would admit that this bill would destroy the state's 57 pregnancy centers, both medical and counseling.

No answer.

We asked if she would admit that with these centers gone, the number of abortions (aka, dead babies) would go up.

No answer.

We asked if she would admit that these additional abortions would mean more profits for the abortion industry, which in turn would mean more money in her re-election coffers -- she got $2,400 last election from them.

No answer.

Finally, we asked her if she planned to vote for the substitute text that is going to be revealed tomorrow, Thursday, in the committee, just prior to being voted on, without giving the public a chance to review it.

Her spokeswoman couldn't hang up the phone on us fast enough.

Perhaps the reason she doesn't answer questions is that when she does, she blatantly lies.

We have discovered that when one of her constituents recently contacted her to urge her to vote against HB1366, she responded by claiming (through her staff) that Care-Net pregnancy center representatives told her that their clinics were "not medical clinics".

This is very important. It's important because the fact that many of the clinics are medical clinics, with a licensed medical director, means that they are already completely regulated under regular medical regulations, obviating the basis for much of this legislation.

CareNet of Puget Sound (CPS) sent out a rebuttal today to Rep. Green's deceptions. They pointed out that they have had multiple direct contacts with Green, in which they systematically educated her on the issues, and she seemed to respond and indicate an understanding.

CPS Executive Director Kim Triller met with her in person, along with a paralegal, and with Joseph Backholm, Executive Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, himself also an attorney.
"Following the House Bill hearing, Kim Triller returned to her office and met with the staff with information refuting the false testimony given at the HB 1366 hearing and assuring them of our medical director's licensure and sound medical protocol. Another contact was made to Representative Green's office via an e-mail from Care Net of Puget Sound to further support the authenticity of our pregnancy centers' medical services."

And there's another letter Green sent out to a constituent. In it she pays lip service to the 62,000 women in Washington that get life-saving help from pro-life pregnancy centers every year, but then goes on to regurgitate unsubstantiated, discredited talking points from the abortion lobby. She didn't even distance herself from the malicious penalties in the bill that are so bad that even the bill sponsor and committee Chair have supposedly fixed in the substitute bill.

She seems to be one of those extremist liberals intent on proving that the less you expect, the less disappointed you will be.

Her letter uses a meme we're seeing crop up all over about "a few bad apples". Supposedly a few unnamed, undocumented CPCs have "withheld test results" or "misled women with wrong information".

Yet she has never presented a wit of evidence to back this up. The fact is, there has been no reports of pregnancy center abuse to the Health Department, Better Business Bureau, or other governing agency. The complaints have either been hearsay by biased and ideologically driven radicals from PP, NARAL & "Legal Voice" who sent bogus clients with the intent to take down the centers, or are from women who went to a pregnancy center a long time ago.

Furthermore, pregnancy centers provided over 62,00 appointments with needed women in 2010. "Legal Voice" and "Planned Parenthood Votes!" released a document they called “The Deceptive Practices of Limited Service Pregnancy Centers” (oh look, there's that term! I wonder how it ended up in the text of this bill...) On page two they wrote: “There were more than ten reports…”

So there you have it! Rep. Green wants us to believe that ten reports from a biased, extremist organization with an agenda, out of 62,000 women is something that requires a law to be passed.

And yet we have undercover video after undercover video of her friends at Planned Parenthood engaged in criminal activity and medically inaccurate information designed to sell more abortions (i.e., make more money), and how many calls have we had from Rep. Green for investigations or legislation to protect women from them?

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

That's right. None.


We closed our conversation with her staffmember this morning by asking her if Rep. Green, who only won her district in 2010 with just over 1,200 votes, wanted to go into the next election with the voters thinking about her duplicitous manner of support for this terrible legislation.

Again, no answer.

4 comments:

Christina Dunigan said...

Funny how even after the Kermit Gosnell debacle, prochoice leaders are still too busy protecting women from being annoyed by prolifers to care if women are butchered by aspiring Kermit Gosnells. I guess they really do believe that it's better for a woman to be killed by an abortionist than annoyed by a prolifer.

Chrisdat said...

So please - what happened??? Can’t find any news. Been praying for all today.

Jonathan B said...

The short answer is that they passed the bill with some modified language. Troy Kelley "had to go to the bathroom" and missed the vote, because he didn't want to take a stand against it, and didn't want to go into re-election with a yes vote.

All the constitutional issues remain. The penalty language was improved somewhat.

The Republicans think they can kill it on the floor. Stay tuned for more info.

Anonymous said...

Did Kelley actually say that? Wow.