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Welcome back My Dear Readers to The Other Shoe. First, I would like to say “Thank you!” To everyone that has made this blog the success that I it is today. As I mentioned, in my last article, this blog has received over 4,000 visitor from fifty nations world-wide in just the past two years. I know that I have yet to break into the filed with the ‘Big Boys’ but I am really making a showing for a one-man blog. In the coming weeks, months and year I hope to continue to bring you quality articles that both enlighten and entertain.
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Today I have come here to write about a subject I seldom speak. This subject has divided our nation, since before any of us were born, and will likely divide our great nation for generations to come. AS with all things in life, there are two sides to this debate. Today, I plan on bringing you shocking information from a side with which I doubt you much exposure. The issue is abortion rights in America.
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Well, me thinks that I just lost about 30% of those reading… perhaps not. Everyone that writes about politics and/or governance grabs hold of this ‘third rail’ of American politics. Today, I am going to reach out… touch it, and share some shocking facts.
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The majority of Americans see themselves in one of two camps. They see themselves as either ‘Pro-life’ or ‘Pro-choice’, which truly doesn’t represent the attitudes behind these decisions. For the pro-life camp they see all abortion as a ‘Bad thing’. However, those that consider themselves pro-choice do not always support abortion as a viable option. Take for instance, myself. If it were completely up to me I would be a father. During my marriage, on more than one occasion, my wife became pregnant.
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I very much wanted to have the children. Conversely, my wife very much did not want to have the children. I quickly found out that my rights to those children stopped at the wall of her uterus. I respect your decision but I thought, hard, to keep the children are love had made. In my heart I believe that each and every pregnancy should result in the birth of a child. The children are our future and I think children are the greatest gift any couple can give the community they live in. Now that I put my personal opinion in print I would like to go forward with the heart of this article.
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Of the pro-life camp, the way I see things, is a small subgroup of fervent anti-abortionists. It is the actions… The dire results of the actions of these fervent and abortionists that is the subject of this article today. Much is made of how some feel the unborn children are victims of abortion. But there is another side to this topic. There are other victims in this fight over a woman’s right to choose.
My motivation for writing this article and sharing the following statistics arises out of the case that now sits before our Supreme Court of the United States of America. Perhaps unbeknownst to you a little-known ordinance in Massachusetts is the newest hotspot in the battle between antiabortionists in a woman’s right to choose. More specifically between the rights of anti-abortionists and the rights of the health care workers that make it their life’s work to help women with the exercise of their reproductive rights. In Massachusetts there is a legally mandated ‘buffer zone’ of 35 feet at the entrance of all clinics providing reproductive services. Just like the zone outside a polling area, and like the buffer zone the United States supreme court enjoys. In Massachusetts antiabortion activists cannot come closer than 35 feet of the entrance of, let’s say, a Planned Parenthood location.
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This buffer so was originally enacted, and the law was written for, the protection of the health care workers in clinics providing reproductive services to women. Now let me share with you the number of death threats against workers and doctors and clinics where movements reproductive services are offered. These are just the number of death threats reported since I graduated high school. There have been 436 death threats against doctors and health care workers in reproductive clinics from 1977 to 2013.[1]
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Of those 436 death threats, since I graduated high school, eight times those threats resulted in the murder of a doctor or healthcare worker who had devoted their life to women’s reproductive health. In that same length of time there have been 1,490 incidences of vandalism in 2,218 incidences of trespass[2]. In that very same length of time 181 clinics have been the victims of arson by fervent anti-abortion activists. There have been 198 incidences of assault and battery and, believe it or not, there have been four kidnappings by antiabortionists of healthcare workers merely working in the clinic devoted to women’s reproductive health.[3]
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As a boy I worked in the Herman professional building for Herman orthopedic Associates every summer archiving old x-rays, for my father stop in the late 80s and early 90s I worked for Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach Memorial Hospital in every aspect of the pharmacy department. In the last years of the 90s I spent my time working in a clean room for Abbott Laboratories in Santa Fe Springs preparing IVs for home healthcare patients and patients in hospice. Each and every time I was just an employee of the hospital. An employee of the clinic stop or, an employee of us pharmaceutical laboratories Corporation. The victims of the 42 bombings[4] of clinics devoted to the care of women’s reproductive rights were just employees of a clinic, or of the hospital.
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In the time since I left high school there had been seven team attempted murders and 99 attempted bombings or arson[5] against clinics providing reproductive care for women. There have been 391 instances of invasion in 1490 incidences of vandalism towards the workers of clinics providing reproductive care for women in the United States.[6] 17 times a fervent antiabortionists attempted to commit murder of a worker at a clinic providing reproductive care for women in the United States of America since I graduated high school.[7]
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Just since 1995 state legislatures all over America have passed more than 700 new laws restricting their reproductive rights of women in America.[8] below you will see a chart I found showing this bike in the number of laws being passed just since 1985 restricting and or limiting reproductive rights of women in America stop just last week five Republican members of the House of Representatives put together a bill that would require all women in America that received an abortion due to rate and incest to have to undergo an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.[9]
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700 new laws restricting and or limiting the rights of American women to free and equal access to reproductive health care, and that’s not enough. On top of that, as if to add insult to injury, healthcare working workers in women’s reproductive health clinics have been victim of anthrax are bio terrorism threats 663 times and victims of attacks done with butyric acid 100 times.[10] each and every year, in this great nation of ours, more and more states create more and more barriers between women’s and access to clinics providing necessary medical procedures for women’s reproductive rights. Yet each and every year workers of these clinics are made victims at their place of employment or in their very homes.
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[caption id="attachment_2171" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
Antiabortion Laws Enacted by States Since 1985[/caption].
530 times medically trained workers, of clinics providing women’s reproductive care, have been stalked by antiabortionists, and 183 workers have been victims of burglary at their place of work or in their very homes.[11] all in all, since I graduated high school, there have been 6633 violent or offensive crimes committed by anti-abortion activists against the doctors and workers just trying to provide reproductive medical care to women in America.
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Further, My Dear Readers, we all know that these are just the crimes that are reported to authorities. These numbers, as shocking and disturbing as they are, merely reflect the people who had the courage to report the crimes. This does not include the, I am sure, thousands of women beaten (every year) by their spouses for going to, or participating in, programs educating women about their reproductive rights… or seeking information or assistance from clinics providing reproductive care. I can assure you that the real numbers total into the tens of thousands of incidence, and we both know in our hearts what I am saying is true. Each and every year women see their reproductive rights limited, or eliminated. Each and every year, it becomes more and more difficult for women to get the testing they need to prevent cervical cancer.
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“Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States.”[12]
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That is a tragic reality, for women in America.
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“However, in the past 40 years, the number of cases of cervical cancer and the number of deaths from cervical cancer have decreased significantly. This decline largely is the result of many women getting regular Pap tests, which can find cervical precancer before it turns into cancer.”[13]
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Unbeknownst to the majority of men, especially Congressman and Senators, something like 60% of American women between the ages of 18 and 27 have their first test for cervical cancer at a Planned Parenthood location.
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“Planned Parenthood provides 585,000 Pap tests and nearly 640,000 breast exams each year…”[14]
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[caption id="attachment_2170" align="aligncenter" width="228"]
2010 Planned Parenthood Procedures[/caption].
“In 2011 it carried out tests and treatment for more than four million individuals with sexually transmitted diseases. It supplied 750,000 exams to prevent breast cancer, the most common cancer among U.S. women. And it performed 770,000 Pap tests to prevent cervical cancer, which was a leading cause of death among women before this screen became widely available. Planned Parenthood is one of the most important public health care institutions in the country, even aside from its work in rational family planning.”[15]
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Yet in that very same year, 2011, workers in the clinics they work in ,like Planned Parenthood, were victim to; one arson, one bombing, 27 instances of vandalism, 69 incidences of trespass, one instance of bioterrorism threat, three instances of assault and battery, to death threats, and eight burglaries. The very same year, 2011, was a banner year for laws restricting women’s reproductive rights with 92 new laws being passed in the states.[16]
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The ‘thirty-five foot buffer zone’ enacted in Massachusetts was done to protect the healthcare workers of clinics providing women’s reproductive care. These workers do not deserve to be protected from the nearly 100 violent acts perpetrated against them each and every year? Somehow, making an anti-abortion protester stand thirty-five feet from women seeking reproductive health care and the workers that provide these essential services? Somehow, we are to believe that this thirty-five foot ‘buffer zone’ some how… some way… infringes or hampers the write to free speech of the anti-abortionist? If there is any anti-abortionist that is having a problem being heard from thirty-five feet? I promise that I will provide, for free, lessons in speech and projection to these workers that feel they cannot be heard. Come to my home, twice a week for one month, for one hour each time. At the end of the month? I promise you will be heard from thirty-five feet. You listen to me well, practice what I teach you, and you will be heard two blocks away from the clinic!
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I do not like… the personal effect ‘a woman’s right to choose’ had on my life. However, I am appalled by the number and severity of attacks taking place (each and every year) ‘in the name of saving the life of unborn children’. I just cannot wrap my head around the logic that dictates violence against health workers justified as ‘protecting the lives of the unborn’. Honestly, if a person is ‘pro-life’ then there can be no way they can justify taking life… to protect life. That is not just illogical, that is immoral. I believe that abortions should be infrequent, if not rare. However, For the women that do choose abortion? Their access to an abortion should not be a gauntlet.
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For the millions of American women, who each year, go to a Planned Parenthood for a PAP smear or breast exam? I do not feel that they should be made victim of; people yelling in their face outside the clinic, people impeding their entrance to said clinic by any means, fear tactics by anti-abortionists, made to view offensive pictures or materials just outside the clinic… and MOST OF ALL NO WOMAN SHOULD EVER FEAR FOR THEIR SAFETY just to go to a clinic that might also provide abortions as well as other tests and medical treatments necessary for proper women’s reproductive care.
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We men… have no idea what this is like… for American women. We men have it so frigging lucky that nobody is camped outside our doctor’s office with humiliating or offensive pictures or chants or all that junk, just for us to go and get a scrip for viagra! For you, My Dear Readers, I want you to give some honest and genuine thought about the rights of women seeking medical assistance for their need(s) to maintain good reproductive care. Think about the woman that might not go for that PAP smear… merely because the only place she can afford to get that test is a Planned Parenthood. Envision that the only Planned Parenthood near her is under constant surveillance and scrutiny by one or more of these anti-abortion groups. That she genuinely fears for her safety, just to go and get that PAP smear. Now, imagine that is YOUR daughter… and you find out… all too late, she is diagnosed with end stage cervical caner.
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Need I say more?
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As always I am deeply honored that you come here and read my work.
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Thank YOU!
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[caption id="attachment_1812" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
Just a shot of a VERY thankful Danny in His Power Chair[/caption]
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