Choice under new attack from Operation Rescue, led by Troy Newman, the president of the organization.
Operation Rescue has launched a new anti-choice campaign by offering $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of OB/GYN doctors that perform abortions.
Operation Rescue has begun an advertising blitz on the radio, over the Internet and by mailings for the latest campaign against choice.
“We have never found an abortion clinic that completely follows the law,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Specifically, we are looking for information about fraud, including billing fraud, Medicaid fraud, overbilling, double-billing, and things of that nature that defraud the public. We have seen a number of abortionists charged with these kinds of crimes over the years.”
“We are also looking into other violations that directly endanger the lives of women, including sex crimes, the concealment of child sex abuse, unlicensed workers, improper handling of controlled substances, chemical impairment, illegal abortions, falsification of medical records, and other abuses,” said Newman.
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/1277112809.html
With the conservative SCOTUS, women must never take for granted their right to choose.
Anti-Choice groups have been working steadfastly in overturning Roe vs Wade and those of us who believe in choice must counteract those who wish to force their will on women.
On a side note, CBS is also running a second anti-choice Tebow ad four times during the Super Bowl pre-game show.
I am not against CBS running the deceptive, anti-choice ads, but I am concerned that CBS continues to deny left-wing ads, including two pro-choice ads to counter the Tebow ads.
And it is very disturbing that CBS actually worked with Focus on the Family on their anti-choice Tebow ad, which is something that they’ve never done with other advertisers.
This week, Dana Goldstein of the Daily Beast reported that CBS executives collaborated with Focus on the Family on making the ad fit for airing, giving the group guidance that other advertisers don’t receive. Yesterday, Planned Parenthood posted a pro-choice response ad featuring former college and professional football player Sean James and Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/05/focus-pregame/
We must remain vigilant in tracking those who wish to take away the control that women have over their own bodies.
Just saw this on MSNBC:
“Black Children are an Endangered Species”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/us/06abortion.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/slideshow/1937/4
Pro-life/Pro-choice/Pro-Football cartoon
Well I’ll be darned if I would let a raving bunch of religious extremists dictate their beliefs to me about a decision to do with my own body, even the Catholic Church has and had no control over that. Some stranger foaming at the mouth, has even less.
Stay out of my life and keep your eyes out of my bedroom!
This Newman guy really doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, performing abortions is not illegal, so what is he pushing for “citizens arrest” how very irrational is that?
Operation Rescue is only one of the powerful groups that want to take away choice in their desire to control women.
These are dangerous organizations in that they preach the bible and rile their supporters into believing that they are doing the work of God.
Choicelady wrote an exceptional comment below about the dangers of these groups.
I’m starting to wonder if the SCOTUS decision regarding corporations doesn’t have something to do with CBS airing 2 ads during the Super Bowl and pre-game show, in that CBS assisted Focus on the Family with their anti-choice ads.
A media outlet taking on the abortion issue and taking on the anti-choicers side does not bode well for the future for women in this country.
Corporate ceiling, perhaps?
Corporations, aka Right Wing Fascists, wanting to control women.
I expect this from FOX, but not CBS.
Watch for Disney-owned ABC to follow next in taking on the fight to overturn Roe vs Wade.
We have the right, and probably the responsibility, to boycott CBS. Let’s begin with the other sponsors of the Super Bowl and include ALL their programming.
The whole world does not revolve around one woman’s personal decision. When other women have followed suit, they died or were maimed. Others had their desire to have a healthy baby cut short. These are tricky decisions involving a woman’s overall health. Not every woman is the same. To politicize this as what ALL women should do because one woman had a good outcome is to falsly equate one moral decision into a generalizable one that may cost other women their lives. This is dangerous and irresponsible – it’s like ads telling women in the 19th Century that they can ingest tapeworms for weight control because it worked well for a handful of women who did not die from anemia and other complications.
CBS is selling one image, and they need to hear from us that we aren’t buying.
Choicelady – Group files lawsuit about hate-crime legislation stating that it
It will go nowhere. This is not an assault on their right to be bigots – that’s protected free speech. It’s another round of “I’m the VICTIM! I’m the VICTIM!” by the religious right. They will discover, to their sorrow, that we don’t give a damn about what they say so long as they do not directly advocate or do harm. Hate crimes punish actions, not thoughts and speech.
Now – if they decide that hating gays and lesbians entitles them to beat the crap out of one, quite another issue.
The foggy area is whether they have to hire GLBTQ people (or at least “out” ones as opposed to the covert folks who have long populated their ranks). It is my understanding that as long as they do not take tax money, they can hire only 4’9″ straight, albino, hairless Estonians and have no problems. The problem comes when they want tax support AND the right to discriminate. That’s SUCH a no-no. And they simply do NOT get it. Or choose not to get it.
So let ’em sue. It at least diverts their money from other, probably more hideous activities.
Yawn.
Well, they had to of had more than just that help.
This couldn’t get played:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcxpuHF7jg
And good Lord forbid we show a bromance or two.
I find it very disturbing and quite chilling when a news source works with the radical right-wing, except for FOX, as FOX IS radical right-wing and not an actual news source.
But something is very wrong when a media outlet works a political agenda by assisting with their right-wing advertisers.
Unless this is part of the SCOTUS ruling concerning corporations, and this is just the beginning.
Thank you, Boomer. GREAT letter, very powerful. Now – be prepared for retaliation, possibly big time. These people have NO sense of anything but self righteousness. I am seriously telling you to be careful – unless you have an address buried so deeply they cannot find it, you may find them on your doorstep. I did. I don’t work for clinics and never have, but I offended them on various levels and have been stalked three times by them with deep and abiding threats to my life. So be careful PLEASE. They don’t fool around.
Throughout Operation Rescue’s history, from Randy Terry to Troy, they have pretended to be non-violent but in fact were supportive or any violence that happened. Behind the scenes, undercover participants from the pro-choice community saw and heard their viciousness but never could get the goods on them for complicity in the murders and other violence that has been done.
When you believe, or purport to believe, that God is telling you to do things of violence, that God will tell you to violate GOD’s laws, you have crossed into mass insanity. These people are absolutely NO different from insane phony-jihad Muslims or Tamil Tigers, or the Japanese cults with ricin. They are demented, all of them.
I’ve read often here and elsewhere that religion is a corrupting element in human life, and I’d not disagree. OR has bastardized Christianity just as Focus on the Family has done, and it is both crippling to the practitioners and dangerous to the rest of us. How and why America has honed this religious extremism that touts the sanctity of all life (until it emerges from the womb) and then uses that to justify murder is a total mystery to me.
As a sidebar – Focus on the Family joined the CA Catholic Conference during the Yes on 8 campaign to bar marriage equality in CA. They jointly took out an ad threatening to “out” anyone who donated to No on 8 UNLESS they also donated to Yes on 8. Now they want the identities of Yes on 8 people buried because they claim they’ve received death threats. Well, so have NO on 8 people, and while there is not one incident of actual violence against a Yes on 8 supporter, there are hundreds of acts documented against LGBTQ and straight supporters of marriage equality. I don’t doubt the threats – I do doubt evidence of actual actions against the Yes on 8 people. Well – who raised the issue of threat if not FOTF and the Catholics? And so it goes. They now portray themselves as victims, while they were the perpetrators. What sheer hypocrisy.
Same with OR and anti-abortion people. They’ve never EVER been harmed by anyone other than the same pushing and shoving that occurs by them as well.
Beware the bully who portrays him or herself as the victim. They are truly dangerous. Troy is offering this $10K “reward” because the vast majority of doctors and clinics CANNOT be impeached for their compliance with medical standards and practices. Frankly, the pro-choice community should be the first line of “outing” bad doctors and practices – we are supposed to be FOR women, not procedures or practitioners. Of course there are lousy abortion providers just as there are lousy cardiac specialists. So we should turn them in! I’d love that – to see PPFA be the ones claiming Troy’s $10K!!! OR folks have tried this for years. No success. This “reward” has been on the table for at least a decade. It’s sheer grandstanding.
They don’t care about you, Boomer, or any woman. They also care nothing for children. One has only to watch how they treat their own kids. I’ve seen more than one example of child abuse on their picket lines. Backhanding kids across the face; keeping kids outside in scorching heat and freezing rain, always without adequate protection, food or water; forcing them to talk to people they’ve been told want to kill them; shaking their kids because the children are hungry and tired! They’re outrageously bad parents in too many instances. One of the reasons the numbers on the picket lines goes down is that their kids grow UP and leave the ranks, leave their families, leave the abuse. I’ve rarely seen such looks of hate as some children of protesters give to their own parents. I’ts chilling and telling – especially when it’s a girl looking at her father. One cannot help but wonder…
Over the years I’ve met some really compassionate and loving pro-life people outside clinics, but they tend to leave the ranks when they see the “leaders” and their behavior. So what’s left are the hard core, the nut jobs, the crazies. And they are deadly. We used to get told not to worry too much about the people we see every day but to look out for the stranger, the loner. But Roeder and Kopp and Hill were all familiar faces at clinics. And they all killed good people.
The only hope I have is that OR is fragmenting under the weight of sheer ego. Randy Terry and Troy Newman are at odds over the use of the name, Operation Rescue, while Flip Benham and Rusty Thomas are at odds with both of the others. But never EVER think they cannot come together. In Wichita in 2001 the pro-violence people were side-by-side with OR and Operation Save America, all giving high fives and hugging. They aren’t any of them opposed to murder of pro-choice people.
Will there be more killings? Undoubtedly. And the only question in my mind is whether it will continue to be physicians or whether it will now expand to other supporters of choice as well. If this is a Holy War, then none of us is ‘innocent’.
These people think they’re called to bring about the Second Coming by ridding the world of all evil – prochoice people, feminists, Muslims, non-believers, etc., etc., etc. So all here who have tangled with them – be careful. You are not immune from their insanity. Will they kill again? Indeed. Please let it not be any of you.
Wow, frightening comment, choicelady.
Did you report the harassment and death threats to the police?
Did you save any and all letters or correspondence of hate and turn over copies to the authorities?
I would think Homeland Security should be made aware of all threats, since these anti-choice groups are homegrown terrorists.
Yup – but even with the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law, all it came down to was acts of harassment that were not aggregated into true threats. The law does not cover by-standers, escorts, pro-choice people in general, only clinic staff and patients. So police pretty much have to take each act as an individual one, and they amount to misdemeanors at best. Acts of vandalism were mere trifles. This is why hate crimes laws exist – each act may be fairly minor, but the patterns of harassment and intimidation amount to a HUGE crime. This is not true for FACE violations yet unless it is itself an act of major violence.
I do feel safer under Obama than under Bush – we all should. But under Obama rather than Bush, violence is growing just as under Clinton. It’s OR’s way of showing contempt for our president.
Never EVER underestimate them.
The Fathers of Salem would be very proud to know witch hunts are still a going concern 🙄
I remember the first day when, as a woman, I truly felt free – it was when the then Prime Minister of Canada announced the government had no business in the bedrooms of the nation and introduced freedom of choice legislation that passed both Houses – that was back in the 70’s. Abortion was illegal in most of our childhoods and I’m sure we all remember horror stories of wire coat hangers, hot baths and gin …….. never, ever let these arseholes take women back down that road again!!
Exactly.
But I fear that the younger generation has become complacent regarding choice, and take for granted Roe vs Wade.
I do not think that we should ever take our freedom of choice for granted with so many forces working against that, including CBS for working with Focus on the Family on making presentable anti-choice ads for the Super Bowl.
It’s frightening when the MSM begins to work against choice.
javaz,
Roeder is no different than a suicide bomber. Both were brainwashed into doing things they never could have dreamed up on his own.
Operation Rescue is no different than al Qaida or any other terrorist organization. The only difference is that al Qaida steps up to the plate, taking responsibility. On the other hand,
Operation Rescue (OR) knows full well that admitting any form of responsibility, would put the organization itself in jeopardy and in the cross hairs of the FBI and Justice Department.
OR covertly convinced this guy to do what he did; and no I am not pleading his case. However, cult-like organizations (Sarah’s gang, TeaBaggers, the KKK, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, you name it) prey on the weak, the easily swayed, the easily convinced. Then, when those folks take the bait and jump off a cliff, the influencing organizations have the audacity to feign ignorance.
It is not a light-bulb moment to figure out.
Very true, boomer, but as I said below to b’ito, I truly believe that the abortion issue is all about men wanting to control women.
It’s about control.
Seems men just don’t think women should be trusted when it comes to making decisions about our bodies.
Seems men just don’t think we’re capable of understanding that we are baby-making machines, and we are on earth to see to the needs of men.
Bare foot, pregnant, Stepford Wives. 🙄
Does this not tie into your article about separation of church and state? At their convenience?
The Fretting About Whether Democrats Are
Great link, b’ito.
Especially this portion –
Yes, I suppose this could tie into the Separation of Church and State, but this goes further and into new territory by offering a reward for the arrest and conviction of doctors.
I fear that women, especially younger women, have become complacent about abortion rights and sadly, they will not realize what it means if Roe vs Wade is overturned, until it’s too late.
And I really do not believe that anti-choice groups, such as Operation Rescue, are based on religion in as much as a desire to control women.
It’s all about controlling women.
But they do use the cover, the veil, of religion to use their power to control women. If they did not have this cover, they would be, as boomer said, just terrorists. They have no problem to take a life, to control women ,all in the name of god.
Very true, b’ito.
javaz,
I just sent this to Operation Rescue:
Plus, this was on Now at PBS last night:
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/606/index.html
Thanks for the link, Boomer, and once again, excellent letter!
One thing that frightens me, is wondering how many more Scott Roeders will Operation Rescue create with this latest attack.
I do believe that Roeder has stated that Operation Rescue prompted his decision to take care of Dr. Tiller, and that Roeder was angry that Operation Rescue didn’t come to his aid and help him with legal fees.