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French Gvmt Announces Plan to Criminalize Websites Opposing Abortion
LifeSiteNews ^ | September 29, 2016 | Jeanne Smits

Posted on 10/09/2016 1:16:22 AM PDT by BlessedBeGod

September 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The French minister for Families, Childhood and Women’s Rights is celebrating the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion with a plan to gag a number of websites that “mislead” women into thinking they give complete and honest information on abortion.

Laurence Rossignol unveiled plans to criminalize those sites that aim to dissuade women from obtaining a “voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” a procedure that is 100 percent state-funded in France during the first 12 weeks of gestation. Offenders will incur prison sentences of up to two years and fines up to 30,000 euro (about $33,650) when the plan becomes law. Rossignol has announced that the government will propose an amendment to a law entitled “Equality and Citizenship” to be examined by the French Senate on October 4.

The new offense, called “numerical obstruction,” aims to crack down on what Rossignol calls “manipulation” and “biased information” via the Internet in view of convincing women not to have an abortion.

“Moral and psychological maneuvers” in order to prevent abortion were criminalized in France as long ago as in 1993, ostensibly to prevent pro-life activists from trying to convince pregnant women to keep their baby. At the time, they were active near hospitals where abortions are performed. (In France, all public hospitals offering obstetrical services are required to procure abortions.) Fines and prison sentences were already hefty but in practice were seldom inflicted.

But the way the existing law is worded theoretically allows for prosecution of any kind of “pressure” in favor of life on a woman who is pregnant and seeking to put an end to her pregnancy. One example is that of a well-known pro-life activist, retired pediatrician Xavier Dor, who was heavily condemned last year for having shown knitted baby boots to a presumably pregnant woman at a Planned Parenthood center in Paris.

The Internet crackdown requires a new legal incrimination because it is difficult to prove that a woman has in effect been personally pushed to keeping her child by having consulted a website.

The government’s first move against Internet sites that present the negative aspects of abortion — such as www.ivg.net, which speaks of the psychological risks and the trauma of abortion, as well as of pressures on women to abort and their subsequent regret, and offers a help line — was to create a counter-site.

The official government information website on abortion presents addresses and data for a woman to obtain an abortion. It also goes to great lengths to say “post-abortive trauma” does not exist even though “some women” will have a bad experience. It opens with the words: “IVG (the French acronym for voluntary abortion, my choice, my right.”

But government efforts to minimize the impact of ivg.net and other sites that seek to tell the truth about the trauma of abortion (from the woman’s point of view…) were to no avail. Ivg.net comes up first on Internet searches and has recently been joined by a modern, savvy site called “Afterbaiz” (loosely translated to “Afterbang,” and, yes, the site is definitely and regrettably vulgar and explicit) that reaches out to the young generation and poses uncomfortable questions about promiscuity and abortion.

This last site is probably what made Rossignol boil. The tone and graphics of the site look decidedly liberated and recall official sex-education and informative leaflets for adolescents. But its message is not fully conforming to the pro-abortion stance of the French government, which the socialists have taken to paroxystic levels.

Rossignol made clear that “pro-life sites” are not in danger of being censured: “Being against ‘IVG’ is a opinion that may be publicly expressed,” she said in an interview with the left-wing Internet media rue89.nouvelobs.com. The new law aims to prosecute “dissimulation:” the fact that sites purporting to give full information about abortion are in fact hiding the fact that they want to dissuade women from aborting by making them feel “guilty.”

“Abortion is a right in France and it is recognized as such by the law. Women should be able to choose with complete freedom,” she said.

The minister indicated that sites such as ivg.net and Afterbaiz should only be allowed to function if they present themselves clearly as being anti-abortion. She is intent on forcing compliance by means of heavy fines and imprisonment.

A look at the government information website (www.ivg.social-sante.gouv.fr) shows, however, that women can’t expect complete information at that site, which is unequivocally pro-abortion. It explicitly denounces “certain sites” that speak about maternity as well as about abortion, and it downplays the possible bad effects of abortion on the mother. Even in its description of surgical abortion, it speaks about the removal of the “egg.”

Rossignol, in her interview with rue89, discusses the “vulnerability” of women who are pregnant and clearly accuses those who would try to bring them to abandon the idea of abortion. She also says government information is not intended to induce women to have an abortion. She speaks of the “toxicity” of websites that speak of the true trauma of abortion, suggesting that she could not even imagine speaking with their leaders and moderators. She wants to “protect women and girls.”

And what about the liberty of the press and of the Internet? Rossignol proclaims that she cannot “limit liberty of opinion.” She only wants to “limit the dissimulation of an opinion,” she told rue89. But everything points to the fact that it is the opinion itself – any expression of a pro-life, anti-abortion stance, however cautious – that should be punished by French penal law.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1993; abortion; antiabortion; babies; content; dissimulation; dor; evil; france; freedomofspeech; freespeech; guilt; hypocrisy; internet; ivg; life; persecution; rossignol; websites; xavierdor
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1 posted on 10/09/2016 1:16:22 AM PDT by BlessedBeGod
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To: BlessedBeGod

Coming soon to hillary’s america if she wins.


2 posted on 10/09/2016 1:18:14 AM PDT by dp0622 (IThe only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: dp0622

With the UN take over of the internet, maybe coming to the planet.


3 posted on 10/09/2016 1:34:02 AM PDT by beaversmom
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To: dp0622
Coming soon to hillary’s america if she wins.

Absolutely, positively if she wins, but since Obama gave away the Internet, it might happen even if she doesn't win. The UN will stifle free speech. Can you imagine the UN coming after individuals? Sooner or later, someone is going to nut up, and have a falling down moment.

4 posted on 10/09/2016 1:35:34 AM PDT by Mark17 (Calvary's love has never faltered. All it's wonder still remains. Souls still take eternal passage.)
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To: BlessedBeGod

Well, that didn’t take long did it?

Everything we feared and more is coming thanks to one imbecilic president called Barak Hussein Obama.


5 posted on 10/09/2016 1:35:48 AM PDT by Bullish (Elect a Traitor... Get more Treason.)
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To: Bullish

“imbecilic”?

He’s an Evil Bastard.


6 posted on 10/09/2016 1:49:13 AM PDT by Texas Fossil ((Texas is not where you were born, but a Free State of Heart, Mind & Attitude!))
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To: BlessedBeGod

Yet another reason to loath the EU. France is part of it.


7 posted on 10/09/2016 1:49:58 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Texas Fossil
He’s a stupid Evil Bastard.
8 posted on 10/09/2016 1:51:43 AM PDT by Bullish (Elect a Traitor... Get more Treason.)
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To: Mark17
The UN will stifle free speech. Can you imagine the UN coming after individuals?

Even if the person wearing the helmet is your relative, you must do what you must.

9 posted on 10/09/2016 1:52:46 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: BlessedBeGod

Voltaire is spinning in his grave.


10 posted on 10/09/2016 2:01:43 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.)
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To: cynwoody
Even if the person wearing the helmet is your relative, you must do what you must.

If a relative of mine wears a blue helmet, then as far as I am concerned, they are an ex relative, because I will disown them.

11 posted on 10/09/2016 2:08:53 AM PDT by Mark17 (Calvary's love has never faltered. All it's wonder still remains. Souls still take eternal passage.)
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To: Eleutheria5
Voltaire is spinning in his grave.

No, he'd be cool with this.

12 posted on 10/09/2016 2:22:24 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode (Nuke Saudi Arabia now)
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To: BlessedBeGod

Hey France.....you will be DESTROYED by Muslims.


13 posted on 10/09/2016 2:30:42 AM PDT by Ann Archy (Abortion.S...... The HUMAN Sacrifice to the god of Convenience.)
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To: BlessedBeGod

bring back public stocks.
put some of these baby murdering pukes in them in the public squares and throw rotten crap at em.


14 posted on 10/09/2016 2:32:16 AM PDT by Joe Boucher (Go Trump, Give em hell BABY.,)
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France is unfortunately suffering the tyranny of Pro-Kill socialists — the same socialists that invite Islam to rape Her daughters.


15 posted on 10/09/2016 2:32:26 AM PDT by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: Ethan Clive Osgoode

Monsieur l’abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire.

English:

Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.

Voltaire, writing under Pseudonym.


16 posted on 10/09/2016 2:48:30 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.)
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To: BlessedBeGod

Hard to believe the world has fallen as hard as it has. Satan is busy.


17 posted on 10/09/2016 3:03:12 AM PDT by Birdman
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The shallow, 2-dimensional thinkers never grasp the facts that using government weapons to force natural laws to be crushed always means in good time there blood will be spilled. The Bill of Rights is the utterance of natural laws


18 posted on 10/09/2016 3:22:33 AM PDT by USCG SimTech
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To: USCG SimTech
The shallow, 2-dimensional thinkers never grasp the facts that using government weapons to force natural laws to be crushed always means in good time there blood will be spilled. The Bill of Rights is the utterance of natural laws

there = their. Thanks auto correct

19 posted on 10/09/2016 3:24:05 AM PDT by USCG SimTech
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To: Texas Fossil; Bullish; Lazamataz

He’s all that, and so much more.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3478053/posts


20 posted on 10/09/2016 3:54:34 AM PDT by BykrBayb (Lung cancer free since 11/9/07. Colon cancer free since 7/7/15. PTL ~ Þ)
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