Jew World Order

* Abortion opponents say laws promote safety, better care
* Mississippi could be first state without abortion facility
* Nearly 40 laws passed this year, 60 in 2011
By Emily Le Coz
TUPELO, Miss., July 18 (Reuters) – American women face increasing legal obstacles to obtaining abortions as more states pass laws restricting access, some so stringent they approach a ban on the procedure, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The New York-based advocacy group cited nearly 40 laws enacted across 15 states this year having the potential to restrict women’s access to reproductive health care, nearly 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made the controversial procedure legal.
Among the measures are some the group claims seek to ban abortion by imposing rules so burdensome upon women and providers it is nearly impossible to comply.
Mississippi and Tennessee passed such measures this year. The Center for Reproductive Rights has challenged the constitutionality of Mississippi’s new law, which requires abortion providers to be certified in obstetrics and gynecology and have hospital admitting privileges.
A federal judge ruled last week that Mississippi could enforce the law, but also allowed the state’s sole abortion clinic to continue legally operating while it tries to comply. Should the law ultimately result in the clinic’s closure, Mississippi would be the first U.S. state without a single abortion facility.
“I think the constitutional protection for women’s rights to choose is robust, but that isn’t stopping state legislatures from introducing terrible legislation and, increasingly, passing it,” said Jordan Goldberg, the center’s state advocacy counsel who authored the report entitled “2012 At the Midpoint: The Assault Continues.”
“I don’t think it’s a question of the right not existing anymore,” Goldberg said. “It’s that we will have to resort to the courts to protect it.”
The report referred to 2012 as the “powerful aftershock” that followed what it called last year’s “seismic” attack on reproductive rights. More than 60 laws passed in two dozen states in 2011 seeking to restrict access to women’s health care, according to the report.
But abortion opponents said the laws cited by the Center for Reproductive Rights aim to protect women from a sometimes unscrupulous industry peddling substandard care.

DISPUTE OVER QUALITY OF CARE
Fly-by-night abortion providers and dangerous chemical procedures have forced states to pass the recent legislation, said Mary Spaulding Balch, director of the department of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, a grassroots group that works against abortion.
“You’re talking about lower-level health care providers,” Spaulding Balch said.
Particularly troubling is the emergence of “circuit rider” abortion providers who fly from state to state performing procedures and leaving as soon as they’re done, offering no aid to patients suffering later complications, she said. Recent laws requiring abortion providers to have local hospital privileges are meant to curb such scenarios, Spaulding Balch said.
Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic uses out-of-state physicians. But owner Diane Derzis said women aren’t abandoned after the procedure and can reach a clinic staff member 24 hours a day in case of complications, which are rare, she said.
Derzis has said the state’s new law exists only to close her clinic, which has struggled to get local admitting privileges for its doctors. Despite anti-abortion statements by top Mississippi officials at the time of the bill’s passage, its sponsor, Republican state Representative Sam Mims, said it was meant to protect women.
Other states cited by the report for their “harmful” laws are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Goldberg attributed the recent rush of laws in part to the large number of conservative leaders elected during the wave of anti-government sentiment in 2010. But she predicted a slowdown.
“There have always been these attacks,” she said. “We’ve seen a backlash this year against the hostility that came out last year. When people look at what legislatures are doing, they’ll be upset and they’ll voice their frustration.” (Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jackie Frank)

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• 99 Problems (JAY-Z)

  Eric Fehrnstrom, senior campaign adviser for Mitt Romney, a href=”http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/06/03/494238/fehrnstrom-shiny-objects-women/” target=”_hplink”said on Sunday/a that issues pertaining to women’s reproductive rights, such as abortion and birth control, were “shiny objects” meant to distract voters from the real issues.

  “Mitt Romney is pro-life,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.”

• Talk (Coldplay)

  The Senate will vote Thursday on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would expand and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and make it illegal for employers to punish women for bringing up pay disparity issues.

  Dana Perino, a Fox News contributor and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, a href=”http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/30/perino-equal-pay-issue-is-a-distraction-for-just-48-hours/” target=”_hplink”called the equal pay issue/a “a distraction” from the country’s real financial problems last week.

  “Well, it’s just yet another distraction of dealing with the major financial issues that the country should be dealing with,” Perino said. “This is not a job creator.”

• Just My Imagination (The Temptations)

  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose home state’s legislature recently defunded Planned Parenthood and voted to pass a bill that would allow employers to deny women birth control coverage, a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/26/john-mccain-war-on-women_n_1455591.html” target=”_hplink”delivered a floor speech/a in which he insisted that the war on women is something imaginary for Democrats to “sputter about.”

  “My friends, this supposed ‘War on Women’ or the use of similarly outlandish rhetoric by partisan operatives has two purposes, and both are purely political in their purpose and effect: The first is to distract citizens from real issues that really matter and the second is to give talking heads something to sputter about when they appear on cable television,” he said.

• Butterfly Fly Away (Miley Billy Ray Cyrus)

  Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried to trivialize concerns about the legislative “war on women” by comparing it to a “war on caterpillars.”

  “If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Priebus a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-05/priebus-says-gender-battle-as-fictonal-as-caterpillar-war.html” target=”_hplink”said in an April interview/a on Bloomberg Television. “It’s a fiction.”

• Distraction (Angels And Airwaves)

  Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Sarah Steelman (R) took heat from her opponents in May when she contended that Democratic lawmakers’ focus on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act was “a distraction” from the issues they should be dealing with instead.

  “I think it’s unfortunate that the Democrats have made a political football out of this thing, which I think is what they keep doing to distract from real problems that are facing our nation,” she said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio.

• We Don’t Care (Kanye West)

  South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) defended the Republican Party in April for going after insurance coverage for contraception by arguing that women don’t actually care about contraception.

  “Women don’t care about contraception,” she said on ABC’s The View. “They care about jobs and the economy and raising their families and all those other things.”