Lying Costs! Send Money!

Regular readers of DJ! know that we are not keen on much to do with the Vatican Taliban here, with one exception, Raymond Gravel.

Seems he was a tad ticked at being called 'pro-abortion' by LifeShite, so he sued.

Today we learn that the case is going to trial.

A libel and defamation lawsuit against LifeSiteNews.com, filed by Canadian priest Father Raymond Gravel who describes himself as “pro-choice,” will go to trial.

Fr. Gravel claims that LifeSiteNews' depiction of him in the agency's news articles as “pro-abortion” is libelous, because he says he is “pro-choice” but does not support abortion per se.

In response to the advancement of the case, LifeSiteNews editor John-Henry Westen called the move “a grave danger to freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, not only in Canada, but in North America.”

Freedom is in grave danger! Send money!

Fr. Gravel claims that LifeSiteNews' reporting about him ruined his reputation as a politician and priest. He seeks damages of 500,000 Canadian dollars, or about $492,000, as well as costs.

On Jan. 11 a Quebec judge ruled that the lawsuit can advance to trial, dismissing the claims of LifeSiteNews that Fr. Gravel is merely intending to gag them.

The damages sought by Fr. Gravel are identical to a full year's budget for the site, according to its editors. It has already spent some $170,000 on the suit.

Waaah.

And its USian cousin better start raising some big bucks to defend against a potential? probable? suit by Dr LeRoy Carhart over this bit of libel.


ADDED: More details on the Gravel case. Also a wrinkle: defamation law is somewhat different in Quebec.

Lightning and Vultures

The Vulture Culture that feasts on the suffering of abortions gone wrong will be sooo disappointed. The cause of death of the woman trumpeted as 'killed' by Dr Carhart is natural causes.

A 29-year-old woman died of natural causes after visiting an abortion clinic in Montgomery County and suffering a rare complication related to childbirth, according to an initial finding by the Maryland medical examiner’s office.

The complication, which occurred when amniotic fluid was pushed into the woman’s bloodstream, can occur during or after abortions, natural deliveries or Caesarean sections.

An expert, who obviously could not comment on this specific case, said:

Amniotic fluid embolisms are rare, and the medical profession doesn’t have a good handle on how they affect a patient’s body, Eisinger said. “It’s kind of the obstetric equivalent of getting hit by lightning,” he said. “It is usually unexpected, sudden and often fatal.”

And since the risk of death from abortion in the developed world is about 0.6 per 100,000 procedures, it may well be less common than death by lightning strike.

Worldwide, it is a very different story, with an estimated 70,000 women a year dying from unsafe, usually illegal abortions.

Funny, we never hear a peep about those from the fetus fetishists. They do get reported regularly. One doesn't have to look very hard. Here's one from today in Ghana.

An attempt by a 17-year-old Junior High School (JHS) student at Atwedie in the Asante-Akim South District, to abort a four-month pregnancy went tragic as it led to her untimely death.
. . .
An autopsy showed that she died from an illegal abortion.

Will the finding in the recent case shut the fetus fetishists up about this poor woman?

Nope. They just pivot, now filing a 'formal complaint' about Dr Carhart with the medical board.

So the violation of this woman and her family's privacy and the exploitation of their grief continues.

LifeShite Libels Dr Carhart

I am not a lawyer, but this isn't libel I'll eat my hat.

Dr Carhart should sue.

The Christian Taliban Strikes Again

Fetus fetishists revel in any injury or complication associated with abortion. Almost daily, LifeShite and others like it crow about 'another' ambulance reported -- by one of their clinic harassers of course -- taking someone to hospital from a clinic.

They dance in the streets when a clinic is investigated for any cause, often at their own instigation.

They worship predatory quacks as anti-heroes.

But what really gets them creaming their Depends is a death that can be linked to abortion.

There's been one such recently in the US but what they are doing with this one is utterly despicable -- even for them.

Here are the facts so far. A 29-year-old woman was 33 weeks pregnant when something went catastrophically wrong.

I can say 'catastrophically wrong' because this was very much a wanted pregnancy. A name had been chosen, nursery decorated, and a online gift registry set up.

How she got to Dr Carhart is unclear but understandable because since the assassination of Dr Tiller he is one of the very few specialists left in the US who can and will perform a late-term abortion.

Of course, Dr Carhart has been relentlessly targetted by the same domestic-terrorism enablers who helped murder Dr Tiller. I imagine his clinic is under constant surveillance.

So, something went wrong with the pregnancy, then something else went terribly wrong and the woman and wanted fetus both died.

That's about all we should know about this tragedy until it is investigated properly.

Except it is not all we know.

More than 150 demonstrators gathered near the clinic Monday to step up their efforts to draw national attention to the case, asserting that the clinic’s leader, LeRoy Carhart, was directly responsible for the woman’s death and that she had come to his office for a multi-day abortion procedure when she was 33 weeks pregnant.
. . .
On Monday, opponents of abortion carried signs with statements such as “A fetus is a child” and “Life is not a choice.” One demonstrator held up a large photograph of the woman who died, identifying her by name next to the abbreviation “R.I.P.”

How did they know her name, her circumstances, the procedure?

Jill Fucking Stanek found out. (No link. I have redacted the name, for all the bloody good that will do now.)

I did not report on the death last week of a patient of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart because I did not have corroboration.

I now do.
. . .
I confirmed the identities of the victims through two sources. After a name ID was received from an impeccable informant, sidewalk
counselors at the abortion clinic positively identified NAME’s obituary photo. NAME's obituary also states she “passed away suddenly.”

Following is the information and timeline pieced together through those and other sources. Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger is to be commended for her work exposing this terrible tragedy.

The self-congratulatory post included a link to the damn gift registry, since taken down. But Stanek gleefully presents a screen-cap she'd taken, no doubt anticipating that a grieving family would desperately want that sort of reminder to disappear pronto.

One sentence is given to the reason.

Approximately two weeks ago NAME learned her daughter suffered from fetal anomalies.

Oh, just some pesky little anomalies that NAME happened to learn about -- on a whim, no doubt.

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak writes.

Lots of people are opposed to the kind of late-term abortion that preceded the death of a woman in Maryland last week. I understand that.

But everyone should be opposed to the blatantly illegal violation of her privacy and the exploitation of her death by protesters using it to make their point.

Her name and photo have appeared on protest signs, in blogs and in newspapers.
. . .
[At the protest. . .] “It was a perfectly healthy young woman that died,” said Michael Martelli, executive director of the Maryland Coalition for Life, an antiabortion advocacy group.

And how would you know that, Mr. Martelli? Do you know her?

No, he doesn’t, he told me.

Well, silly Ms Dvorak. Doesn't she know that any fetus fetishist is far more knowledgeable than specialist OB/GYNs?

And now as Ms Dvorak says, the dead woman's photo and name and circumstances, as well as her family's, are being bandied about by a bunch of gore-loving panty-sniffers.

The scumsuckers have massively violated the Privacy Rule of something called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). But the office that deals with complaints is backed up and 'has not yet taken any enforcement actions against hospitals, doctors, insurers or anyone else for rule violations'. So, good luck with that, potential complainants.

The scumsuckers are crudely manipulating a private tragedy for their own purposes. They are merrily cloaking their joy in glurgey statements of faux condolences. They are rejoicing at finding yet another sad, sad case to twist and inflate and misrepresent.

They show themselves to be what they are: merciless haters who wish death on women who don't comply with their edicts.

In fact, just like the other Taliban.

I'm so confused. . .

Now that Nebraska is the new Kansas, Kansas is trying to become the new Massachusetts.

The governor of Kansas on Thursday vetoed a bill aimed at restricting access to late-term abortions and allowing a woman's family members to sue abortion providers without her consent.

The move comes two weeks after born-again Christian Scott Roeder was sentenced to life in prison for shooting doctor George Tiller to death in the foyer of his Wichita, Kansas church.

Tiller, 67, was one of a handful of doctors in the United States who performed abortions during the third trimester of pregnancy and his clinic was closed in the wake of his May 2009 slaying.

"I was certainly hopeful, and so were lots of people on various sides of the abortion issue, that the legislature would refrain from taking up controversial abortion bills this session given the trauma of Dr. Tiller's assassination," Peter Brownlie, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told AFP.

Brownlie welcomed the veto and said he wished the legislature would focus on passing the state's budget rather than engaging in "a sham exercise in political posturing."

I guess Dr LeRoy Carhart will have a place to practice now that his Nebraska practice has been effectively stymied.

Equality Before the Law*, My A$$

Nebraska is the new Kansas.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has signed two landmark abortion bills into law that both sides of the abortion debate say are firsts in the country.

One bars abortions at and after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on assertions that fetuses feel pain at that time. The current standard is viability, or when a fetus is able to survive outside the womb.

Abortion-rights advocates say that is a clear break with court precedent and it won't withstand a court challenge. Supporters of the ban see an opening in previous court rulings.

The other bill signed by Heineman will require doctors or other health professionals to assess whether women have risk factors that could lead to mental or physical problems after an abortion.

In their zeal to punish women and target abortion providers -- one in particular -- Nebraskan lawmakers completely disregarded the sciencey-facty evidence they were presented with.

As we reported here, the 'assertions' that fetuses feel pain at or before 20 weeks is pure hogwash.

As are assertions that abortion causes psychological or mental problems as we reported here.

The aim of the first law is simple, to target late-abortion provider Dr LeRoy Carhart, one of the few remaining specialists left in the US, since Dr. George Tiller was murdered.

Late-term abortions are those performed past 20 weeks gestation, so that 20-week limit is the giveaway of the law's intent. By the way, less than 1 per cent of abortions in Canada and just over 1 per cent in the US are done after 20 weeks and for pretty dire reasons. In Canada, 90 per cent of abortions are done at or before 13 weeks.

And, sadly, this will affect not just Nebraskan women, but women from all over the US desperately seeking such specialized procedures from Dr. Carhart.

Canadian women too.

In Canada, a woman cannot have an elective abortion past 24 weeks gestation. There are simply no doctors and no facilities that will allow for an elective termination at that point. In fact, there are only a few doctors in the entire country who are willing to perform abortions past 20 weeks. As there are different methods of abortion, each woman's pregnancy is individually assessed by a doctor to help decide which method is safest and best for her. However, since abortion services after 20 weeks are not easily available in Canada, many women who seek an abortion at this point must either travel to another province or to the United States, or must continue to carry the pregnancy to term.

Fetus fetishists are celebrating today. And normal people are left -- again -- shaking their heads at the sadistic cruelty of these meddling shitheads.

* The motto of the state.

Do Nebraskan Fetuses Feel More Pain Than Their Neighbours?

The bold new front in the anti-choice war -- the bogus science of fetal pain.

A group of lawmakers is pushing to make Nebraska the first state to outlaw most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the argument that the fetus might feel pain during the procedure.

While six other states, those fetus fetishizing heavy-hitters --Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Utah -- require that women seeking abortion be guilt-tripped with a mandatory lecture including the information that a fetus may feel pain, this would be the first time that fetal pain would determine whether an abortion would be allowed.

Experts testified on both sides of the 'when do fetuses feel pain' question. Anti-choicers were all on the 'you filthy whores are inflicting unimaginable pain on innocent pre-born children' side. (Google 'fetal pain' for a round-up on who's on that side.)

Not surprisingly, the sciency-facty people are on the 'let's look at fetal neurological development, shall we?' side.

Well, shall we?

In 2005, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that found:

A fetus's neurological pathways in its brain that allow for the "conscious perception of pain" do not function until after 28 weeks' gestation.

More science:.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it knows of no legitimate evidence that shows a fetus can experience pain. It says a fetus’ brain begins its final stage of development between the 20th and 40th weeks of pregnancy, and that certain hormones that develop in the final trimester also must be present for it to feel pain. It’s not known exactly when those hormones are formed.

And finally, P.Z. Myers with a straightforward explanation of fetal brain development.

Which is all very interesting, but kinda beside the point. Because the law would probably be found unconstitutional.

Opponents say the bill, if passed into law, would be found unconstitutional if tested. It bans abortions for fetuses who could not live outside the womb and it fails to state a constitutionally recognized state interest - preservation of the potential life and regulation necessary to protect the health of the woman.

So what's really going on here? Besides the usual wanking, I mean.

Well, it seems that the sponsor of the bill had this to say when introducing it:

"With Dr. Leroy Carhart performing and advertising such late-term abortions here in Nebraska, the state needs to recognize the reality of what’s going on," Flood said.

Carhart, 67, has twice challenged abortion bans before the Supreme Court, successfully defeating a Nebraska late-term abortion ban in 2000 because the state didn’t provide for a woman’s health, and losing as part of a broad challenge to the 2007 federal ban on the so-called partial-birth procedures.

Abortion rights proponents are worried anti-abortion groups, by tying Carhart’s name to the current debate, are making him more of a target.

Dr Carhart already has a target painted on his back, his clinic, his home, his family, and his employees, and probably his little dog too. Painted by Operation Scumbag Rescue, moving on from its successful campaign against Dr George Tiller.

Let's run the checklist:
Another impediment to legal abortion? Check.

Manipulate and guilt-trip women? Check.

Target an abortion provider? Check?

Oh, and one more. Caitlin Borgmann, who testified against the bill at the hearing, reports:

At the hearing yesterday, the proponents of Nebraska's bill to ban abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy were asked about the lack of a mental health exception. In response to questions about a woman who is suicidal, they suggested she be treated with electroconvulsive therapy and be confined and restrained for the duration of her pregnancy, rather than be allowed access to abortion.

Torture and imprison women and force them to bear children? Yee-haw!

Push-Back Continued

I'm liking Dr LeRoy Carhart more the more I learn about him.

He's not taking Operation Re-Skew's crap lying down. Far from it.

Adding to this weekend's humiliation of the anti-abortion terrorist-enablers, Dr Carhart invited a local tv station to tour his clinic.

The anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue claims four past employees at the clinic say his staff is unqualified and the clinic has unclean conditions. "We've already identified several things that this clinic is violating state statues and we're going to be meeting with the attorney general to close this abortion clinic down once and for all," said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue.

Carhart calls the claims outright lies. He shows us where tools are sterolized, the ultra-sound room, and pharmacy that's under lock and key.

Since the murder of his friend and abortion doctor, Dr. George Tiller; he's even more aware of the danger that comes with his job. "I think about security a lot more than the average person," said Bellevue Abortion Clinic Dr. LeRoy Carhart. But he says that will never stop him from fighting for what he feels is right. Performing late-term abortions for woman he says face gut-wrenching circumstances. "We're not going to allow them to deny us our choice," Carhart said.

(I expect those tools are sterilized, too.)

You go, Dr Carhart.

Push-Back UPDATE

About that push-back at Dr Carhart's clinic:

The rally in Bellevue came nearly three months to the day after Tiller's killing. A massive police presence, including heavily armed rapid-response teams, monitored the demonstrators. Streets were blocked off, and police kept both sides separated with buffer zones in between.

Abortion rights supporters outnumbered their opponents nearly 2 to 1.

Operation Rescue drove in two of their so-called Truth Trucks, delivery trucks with giant billboards of dismembered fetuses on the sides. The vehicles parked in a designated area outside the clinic to gasps from the women's rights groups. Police used sniffer dogs to make sure the vehicles did not have any explosives before allowing them to park.

Megan Belleavia called the trucks abortion "pornography" that shouldn't be allowed. "You can't stand out in the street corner and show pictures of a bare-breasted woman without getting in trouble, so why should they be able to show that?" she said.

Two to one. Excellent.

In the comments here, JJ links to Amanda Marcotte's piece, 'They push the hardest on abortion because we give the most on it'.

We've got to stop letting the batshit crazies intimidate us normal, sane people.

Push-Back Time

Operation Scumbag is now targetting Dr LeRoy Carhart. They've planned a demonstration for this weekend at Dr Carhart's clinic.

But pro-choice people are pushing back. Blogger Kevin Gosztola is there, reporting and Twittering. His blogpost includes a link to this Maddow interview with Dr Carhart.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm nowhere near Nebraska, but if I were I'd turn this middle-aged feminist body out again in defense of women's rights.

ADDED: I found this link to ProChoice America's rally for Dr Carhart at JJ's.

FACE this!

Department of Justice is on the job.

An anti-abortion terrorist has been indicted.

Donald Hertz, 70, of Spokane, Wash., was indicted on charges of making telephone threats to Hern's office and violations of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).

The indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court this afternoon.

Hertz is the first person prosecuted by the Justice Department under the FACE Act since Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, was killed in Wichita, Kan., said Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar.

The threat to Hern's family came June 23, three weeks after Tiller was shot to death on May 31 while at church, Hern said.

Dr Warren Hern is a a late-term abortion provider who is also very outspoken about calling terrorists terrorists.

"This kind of terrorism has to stop," Hern, 71, said Wednesday. "I'm very grateful for the hard work the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service did to find this man who made a threat to my family."
. . .
Hern was "grateful" that the law was used in his case and said he hopes it continues to be applied in other cases where abortion providers are harassed.

If convicted, Hertz faces a prison sentence of up to six years and a fine of up to $350,000.

I wonder if Dr LeRoy Carhart's Federal Marshall protection has been restored in the light of this development. I pray so.

Woo.

Look who just dropped by DAMMIT JANET!


The US Department of Justice, using the search string 'army of god kill dr carhart'.

If I were a prayin' woman. . .

I'd be praying for Dr LeRoy Carhart. A few days ago, JJ, the unrepentant old hippie, blogged about Dr Carhart, a very brave man.

Well, it seems he'll have to be even braver. Inscrutably, his protection by federal marshalls has been withdrawn.

Despite mounting threats to the clinic--and potentially to the life--of Nebraska Dr. Leroy Carhart, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has removed the federal marshals earlier charged with protecting him.

Dr. Carhart lost his federal marshal protection two weeks ago, much to the alarm of pro-choice leaders, leaving him vulnerable at a time when anti-choice violence has been escalating across the country, and when Carhart himself has been openly targeted by groups such as Operation Rescue, which is calling for protests at his clinic later this month. In addition, members of the Army of God, an organization that promotes the use of violence against providers of abortion care, and glorifies those who commit acts of murder, are also targetting Dr. Carhart.

Women's rights and health groups are now working strenuously to ensure that the DOJ restores protection by federal marshals for Dr. Carhart and to urge the DOJ and the FBI to investigate Tiller's murder and other strategies used by these groups as part of a pattern of domestic terrorism.

Officials at the Department of Justice could not be reached for comment this weekend. RH Reality Check will be following up with them on Monday, August 10th.

Just WTF are they thinking? Dr Carhart is Operation Scumbag's target, just like, exactly like Dr. Tiller was.

And as the volume of nuttiness and the threats of violence are rising even higher in the Excited States, they withdraw his protection???!!!!! Now????!!!!