Dutch Woman Faces Murder-By-Abortion Charge

By Cernig

Is this insane or what?

A Dutch woman is being prosecuted for murdering her unborn child in an unprecedented case after she travelled to Spain for an abortion when she was already 27 weeks pregnant.

Today a judge rejected the 24-year-old woman's request for an injunction ordering an end to the Dutch murder probe, her lawyer Gerard Spong said.

Spong believes his client has done nothing wrong because Spain has a provision in its abortion legislation that allows late-term abortions, "if there is a psychological need for it," he said in a telephone interview.

"My view was and is that as long as Spanish judicial authorities do not make any decision that this woman has committed an offense ... the Dutch judicial authorities should abstain (from investigating)," he added.

Abortion is legal in the Netherlands up to the 24th week of pregnancy and it is extremely rare for Dutch authorities to file murder charges linked to such a procedure. The fact that the woman is being prosecuted for an abortion carried out overseas makes the case unprecedented.

I mean, wtf? I know the E-Christian crowd will be happy about this, but is this really the way the rest of us want to go?

The confusing parsing of abortion numbers

by shamanic

Before the confusion, the good news: Abortion rates in America have dropped to their lowest level in more than three decades, and more women are using RU-486 than surgical abortion. After that, the statistics become confusing.

For instance, the article says there are more abortions in the the Northeast than in the South. Fair enough, but clinics in the largely rural south are few and far between, whereas in the highly urbanized Northeast, my guess is that women are never more than a couple of hours away from a clinic. We also have the whack jobs pushing crazy laws designed to guilt women down here, and there are fewer of those nutbags in New Jersey.

In my imaginary perfect world, abortion would be (to borrow a phrase) safe, legal, and rare. 1.2 million still seems like too high a number, but I recall data earlier in the decade that showed a bump in abortions during the 2000-2001 recession and afterwards. In nearly every way, the new information is good news. Right up until the last sentence: "Nevertheless, 87 percent of U.S. counties, accounting for 35 percent of women ages 15 to 44, do not have an abortion provider, the report found." 87% of counties? That number is way too high too.

I suppose if you're highly resolved on this issue, this post seems contradictory. I want more access for more women and a reduction in the overall rate of abortion. It seems contradictory, but keep in mind what Planned Parenthood clinics do: they provide education, wellness check ups, and contraception as well as abortion services. Without those first three, a lot more women are going to need the fourth.

The Smearing Of Jamie Leigh

By Cernig

And so the serious smearing begins of a 22 year old Houston girl, Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang raped by KBR contractors in Iraq. Bob Owens of the Pajamahedeen and Confederate Yankee is on the case.

He finds that ABC hyped their story some but doesn't knock a single hole in Jamie's testimony. The rape kit wasn't handed to KBR, it was State ineptitude that lost and found it again. It wasn't a shipping container, it was a living container (with air conditioning) she was imprisoned in. Both these findings are consistent with Jamie's own account and court filings, if not with ABC's. Yet Owens at no point makes it clear that this is the case, deliberately blurring the lines between the ABC story and Jamie's own account to make it appear - without a shred of proof - that Jamie is complicit in ABC's tabloid reporting of actual facts.

But Jamie Leigh's website has removed her journal page, probably because the woman who experienced this traumatic experience is sick of it being poured over feverishly by rightwing "gotcha" seekers like Owens. It is implied with weasel words that this points to Jamie Leigh having something to hide.

And so, although Owens carefully doesn't quite say so in his Pajama's Media post, the mass of wingnut black helicopter theorists catch his intent - that Jamie Leigh is making the whole story up. One commenter opines that: this is their way of avoiding the good news of Iraq and instead focus on "the evils of President Bush's war." The rest aren't far behind.

Over at his own blog, though, Owens has a CYA for his hatchet-job.

For those of you who might expect me to be trying to debunk the case... don't.

Though there are some inconsistencies with certain aspects of the case and the way it has been reported, absolutely nothing seems to contradict the key claim that she was savagely, brutally raped. Nothing contradicts the fact that she has not be able to find justice for 2 years.

I think she's a brave young woman, and hope that she can find both emotional and physical healing.

Bob Owens should be ashamed of himself for not putting those exact words in his PJM post. At the very least, he should go back and put them in comments to that post. Better still if he amended the post.

Update In an added twist -

One of the charges being levelled at Jamie Leigh Jones by prospective "debunkers" is that she alleges she was held under armed guard by KBR but KBR doesn't have it's own armed security.

They're correct. KBR is meant to get all its security details from the US military...but KBR is under a cloud because it might have to pay back $400 million because it sub-contracted other companies to provide it with private armed guards anyway. The Army has admitted that KBR did this in violation of its contract already.

Can you guess who the biggest contractor to provide armed guards for KBR is?

I'll give you a hint. It begins with "B" and ends with "water".

Pro-choice leader leads perilous life

By Libby

Anit-choicers with their violent protests get most of the ink in the press. It's rare to see the other side of the story and this piece on Susan Hill, a pioneer for a woman's right to choose, is a truly a profile in courage. "She has lived through 17 arson attacks and once got 14 bomb threats in a year. One of her doctors in Florida died after being shot three times in the back by a protester, who is now serving a life sentence." It all started for her, with one 13-year-old child.

It was January 1973, Hill's first day on the job in Florida's first abortion clinic outside Miami -- one week after Roe v. Wade. A small girl walked through Hill's door that day, hands curled by cerebral palsy, pregnant by an abusive uncle. She was too stricken and disabled to speak about her problem, but her mother had driven her 250 miles that morning to fix it.

She became a pioneer in the field, having opened multiple clinics in 33 years. It wasn't always as dangerous as it is today.

Hill describes the 1970s as peaceful years. She had a few nuns as neighbors at one clinic, and they may have looked her way scornfully, but there was no violence.

I think because at that time the public understood the dangers of the underground abortion industry. The newspapers regularly carried stories about young women who died from coat hanger abortions, performed under unsanitary conditions in back alleys. But memories fade and politics evolve.

The climate didn't change until 1980, during Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. He sought a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Hill could feel the shift coming overnight. [...]

Abortion became an organizing tool for the political right, Hill says, and Christian groups excited by Reagan's lead targeted her clinics.

It seems to me the protests have become uglier than the procedure itself. I'm astounded by people who laud the sanctity of life of the unborn but have no compunction about endangering the already living with violent protests and who apparently have no empathy for the reasons women have for making such a difficult choice in the first place. I can't sum it better than this.

"If people knew the stories," Hill says, "they wouldn't be so vicious."

Gardasil works great - if you're under 26

by shamanic

You probably remember the minor culture war scuffles that accompanied Merck's vaccine for the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes a range of conditions from genital warts to cervical cancer.

New data out today show that Gardasil protects against a broader spectrum of HPV strains than initially thought, and is really good news for girls and young women the world over. It's thought that tens of thousands of cases of cervical cancer can be prevented annually through vaccination, which is just a terrific application of medical science.

With one caveat... On a recent check up with my doctor, I asked about Gardasil. I'm that rare person who has been exclusively lesbian, and though most of my partners have had heterosexual contacts (this is typically how HPV is transmitted, though the inherent messiness of sex makes it conceivable that transmission can occur between women) all my pap smears have been clean and I've never had any indicators of HPV infection.

My doctor, as all my doctors always have, raised a quizzical eyebrow as I explained this, but I reiterated: no really, only girls. Aren't I good candidate for Gardasil? Turns out I'm not. The vaccine is only available to women 26 years of age and younger. She told me that even if I were able to find a doctor who would provide it to my 31 year old self, it would be a fairly expensive endeavor: three rounds of shots costing in the neighborhood of $200 each.

Merck's website for the drug is pretty unhelpful when it comes to answering my question about why I shouldn't have access to the vaccine at 31. Wikipedia's article also fails to address it, but my guess is that there are studies showing that age 27 is some kind of HPV sweet spot, i.e., if you're going to get it, you've probably got it by then.

And I might. But then again, I might not. I do wish Gardasil was an option for me, because the simplest cure is always prevention.