Excellent article: The Real Estate of Abortion Politics

The Real Estate of Abortion Politics

The fight over building permits for the Aurora, Ill. Planned Parenthood clinic is just one more example of how the fight over reproductive health is coming down to questions of infrastructure.

Ann Friedman | September 21, 2007 | web only

Dr. LeRoy Carhart may be one of the most prominent abortion providers in the country, thanks to the two Supreme Court cases (Stenberg v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Carhart) that bear his name. But the financial wear-and-tear of fighting dozens of courtroom battles over the past decade is visible in the rundown facade of his women's health clinic in Bellevue, Neb., a small town south of Omaha.

The Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, which Carhart runs with his wife, Mary, is housed in building that used to be a marina and boat sales business until the Carharts leased the property in 1993. They gutted it to create their clinic, remodeling the inside to include several small exam and patient education rooms. Inside, two old wood-console TVs blare the Lifetime movie of the week, and the walls are cluttered with framed pictures of horses and lefty bumper stickers. It feels almost homey. "They've been so nice and professional," said one woman, who was at the clinic to have an abortion two days before shipping out to Iraq. "But from the outside it looks like a butcher house."


I think she really hits the nail on the head here in terms of one of the frustrating truths about clinics -- they do often look run-down, and I wish more people understood why. More than that, I wish it weren't that way. She also details all the nasty tactics used to block clinics, close them down, etc.

Well, shit.

Feminist Daily News Wire
September 17, 2007
Convicted Anti-Abortion Arsonist and Kidnapper Released From Prison

Anti-abortion extremist Don Benny Anderson was just released from prison to a halfway house, after serving 24 years for kidnapping Illinois clinic owner Dr Hector Zavallos and his wife Jean. Anderson was also serving time for a bombing and two arson incidents at clinics in Florida and Virginia.

In August of 1982, Anderson and two brothers, Matthew Moore and Wayne Moore, who were also just released to a halfway house, held Zavallos and his wife at gunpoint for eight days. At one point, they forced the doctor to make a recording urging the already anti-abortion President Ronald Reagan to oppose abortion. After threatening to kill them, the kidnappers finally released the couple unharmed.

In their communications with the FBI, Anderson and the Moores used the moniker Army of God, the first public mention of the group. Over the last 25 years, the Army of God – a violent and clandestine antiabortion network – has claimed responsibility for a number of abortion-related murders, arsons, and bombings.

The Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project is the largest clinic defense project in the country. According to 2005 National Clinic Violence Survey (PDF), almost 18% of our nation’s clinics still face the most severe forms of anti-abortion violence including blockades, stalking, bomb threats, and death threats.

And two more articles

I can't express how angry it makes me that I'm paying for these lies. It's a lot of what makes me angriest at the protesters outside the clinics, too. I can understand having differences of opinion on this topic, but if you don't think you can back up your side without lying, what the hell kind of argument do you have?


Federally Funded Lies
Legislation aims to curb deceptive advertising by crisis pregnancy centers

By Martha Calhoon

The stories follow a familiar script: A woman who suspects she might be pregnant visits a local agency that advertises “abortion options,” believing she’ll be counseled on a full range of choices. But this place doesn’t give referrals to abortion providers, or information on contraception, and doesn’t staff medical professionals. Instead, volunteers in lab coats perform an ultrasound on the woman, show her graphic pictures of aborted fetuses, and insist that an abortion would put her at risk of infection and emotional trauma. Finally, she’s handed tiny baby booties and sent home, misinformed and distraught.

There are as many as 4,000 of these so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) throughout the U.S., many of which mask their anti-abortion counseling agenda with advertising that promises legitimate medical care. It is this misleading promotion that Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has challenged by reintroducing the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women’s Services Act. The bill, which died in committee after being first proposed by her last year, would require the Federal Trade Commission to enforce truth-in-advertising standards for organizations claiming to offer abortion services.

Sticker Shock
Birth control prices are skyrocketing— and that’s just one way the current federal administration is making it harder for women to obtain contraception

By Allison Stevens

When Emory University incoming senior Nora Kleinman discovered last winter that the cost of NuvaRing, her preferred method of birth control, had nearly doubled at her campus health center— going from $27 to $44 a month—she was forced to make a quick decision: find a way to come up with an extra $204 a year or switch to her parents’ insurance plan, and thus give up the privacy she had enjoyed at the student health clinic. “Everybody’s fairly irritated about it,” says Kleinman. “Myself and so many other women I know were depending on health services at universities for cheap and affordable contraception.”

Millions of women who purchase contraceptives at student and community health clinics across the country have seen prices go from about $10 a month to anywhere between $30 and $50. Such out-of-reach prices are putting intense financial stress on women who can’t afford to pay retail for birth control. And the pressure goes beyond the individual level: Some family planning clinics serving low-income women may be forced to shut down if prices aren’t soon reduced, leaving poor women with even fewer resources to determine the number and spacing of their children.

Hell, I have good insurance and a job that pays well, and I'm concerned about how much the price of my Nuvaring has increased in the past year. Apparently, I pay full price ($44) if I pick them up at the pharmacy, and I pay about $20 each if I order them three at a time from our mail-order pharmacy. Last year I was paying $12 each. I suspect in my case it's related to general shift of healthcare costs from insurance to insuree, but it still sucks. And it totally, stupidly, counterproductive.