Posted on 03/24/2007 10:21:13 PM PDT by SmithL
Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, has introduced a bill that would require death certificates for aborted fetuses. He claims that this bill is necessary to track how many abortions are performed in Tennessee.
However, Campfield either is concealing his true motives or is unforgivably ignorant for a public official proposing such a measure, because a way already exists to track this data: The number of abortions performed is reported to the state Office of Vital Records and is publicly available.
Here's the difference: The identities of the women are not included in those records, but Campfield's proposed death certificates would include identifying information, such as Social Security numbers, on women. This information is the only additional information Campfield's proposed bill would supply. This bill therefore accomplishes absolutely nothing except to publicly identify women who have had abortions.
Has Campfield never heard of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)? How would he like it if his medical records were publicly available, without his permission? If he had children, would he appreciate it if one of his daughters chose to have an abortion, was publicly identified as having done so and therefore subjected to harassment by people who care nothing for her rights? Would he be OK with her being threatened with physical harm, even death tactics that radical anti-choice people commonly employ? I doubt it.
I am not pro-abortion, as so many anti-choice folks like to falsely and ludicrously characterize pro-choice folks. Every pro-choice person I have ever known wants to see abortions minimized, just as anti-choice people do. But Campfield's proposed tactic of threatening women with public "outing" is in no way going to result in fewer abortions.
The Guttmacher Institute, in a 2003 report titled "Contraceptive Use is Key to Reducing Abortion Worldwide," revealed definitive data showing that women have abortions despite restrictive laws and that women do not have more abortions because of liberal ones; some of the world's lowest abortion rates are in western European countries, where abortion is not only legal but also covered by national health insurance systems.
The only tools that have ever been reliably shown to reduce the abortion rate are birth control education and affordable, harassment-free access to birth control for everyone. The same Guttmacher report also proved that access to contraception is directly related to radically lower abortion rates; for example, between 1988 and 2001, modern contraceptive use increased in Russia by 74 percent, while the abortion rate declined by 61 percent.
And abstinence-only education has been shown in study after study to be, at best, ineffective and, at worst, dangerous to the health of our youth. A Harvard University study of teens who took virginity pledges found that they are less likely than nonpledgers to be forthcoming in follow-up studies of sexual activity, therefore placing themselves and their potential partners at higher risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
The study also found that more than half of the teens who took virginity pledges denied taking those pledges just a year later. Other studies have shown that teens who take virginity pledges often substitute risky behaviors like unprotected anal sex and unprotected sex that does not result in orgasm.
These teenagers have not been given the correct information on how to protect themselves; they have instead been threatened by religious conservatives into claiming abstinence, which ironically has resulted not in actual abstinence but in producing a generation of youth who have embraced sexual acts that are traditionally considered deviant by these same religious conservatives. These perhaps well-meaning yet misguided adults have failed their children, who continue to put themselves at much higher risk than those who have factual information.
Issues of choice aside, think about the fact that this bill would require significant funding and additional bureaucracy that Tennessee cannot spare and create more intrusion by government into our lives, something that conservatives have been consistent and loud in opposing.
This sort of proposed legislation is a resource waster that the people of Tennessee do not need. If Campfield and others like him were truly interested in reducing the abortion rate and not in simply advancing their political agenda, they would be supporting Planned Parenthood and insisting that our kids get real education, not trying to pass bills that amount to terrorizing already vulnerable women.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
This woman writer would fail a 9th grade debate course.
The title led me to believe the article was about The Bent One.
The idea of death certificates for aborted babies seems like an idea whose time should have come long ago. I love this idea!
Such record keeping makes one think of the Nazi's in thier detailed record keeping of the Holocuast.
This is why the abortionists are going to lose. If you don't like it, why are you for it?
Pro-lifers don't have an analogous logical dilemma. We don't say, "Despite the regrettable consequences of babies being born, we must have the choice of birth available to those who have no other option."
We actually approve of babies. (Because we're not sick.)
These children deserve recognition as once living human beings--is there not a way to do this without identifying the mothers who brought them to die? As a woman who made this terrible choice many years ago and has lived to regret it, it is God who will ultimately judge me. But that doesn't mean there aren't fanatics who would use my name and phone number for nefarious purposes. It would be a better to recognize the babies with death certificates without publicly identifying the women. Then the pro-abortion forces would have no excuse to oppose such legislation.
I am not pro-abortion, as so many anti-choice folks like to falsely and ludicrously characterize pro-choice folks. Every pro-choice person I have ever known wants to see abortions minimized, just as anti-choice people do.
It's wrong for pro-lifers to refer to her as pro-abortion, but it's ok for her to refer to them as anti-choice?
"Choose life."
I agree with you.
I agree with the author regarding SSN's and public records. Anyone who proposes such a thing and calls themselves a Conservative is a hypocrite. The best bill is one that had death certificates to respect the children as our fellow citizens, and also reuqires onerous paperwork upon the aborter and her baby butcher, but NOT to include their SSN in a public document. That is a slippery slope for all of us.
We need to bring opprobrium back to the crime of infanticide.
Bill does that without permission, already.
If abortion is actually a right, why should it be minimized?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.