As the mouthpiece for the anti-choice right wing and the American Catholic bishops, the "fair & balanced" Fox News network is the go-to network for the movement that seeks to take America back to the days of back alley abortions. Be it Bill O'Reilly's holy war against an abortion provider who was later murdered, validation for Lila Rose's bogus anti-Planned Parenthood sting videos, or Peter Johnson Jr's weekly denunciations of the Obama administration's birth control mandate, Fox is always available for the promotion of pro-life talking points while Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards is nowhere to be seen. And despite an historic number of recent laws which prohibit abortions even in cases of rape and incest and attempts by the GOP led House to de-fund Planned Parenthood, Fox News has advanced the right wing meme that there is no "war on women." On last week's "America Live" alleged "news" anchor Megyn Kelly combined the meme that there's no war on women with a healthy dose of pro-life lies that, ironically, underscore a very real effort to roll reproductive rights back to the dark ages and, as said on "Jezebel," make it "scary to have lady parts."
Last Friday, Kelly opened with a new Obama ad about how this is "a scary time to be a woman." (True that - The Ninth Circuit just put a hold on a draconian Arizona law that would deny women the right to an abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy unless the woman was on death's door and the only thing preventing Mississippi from being an abortion free state is a court decision. ). Kelly had a great, big snarky grin as she asked right wingnut Lars Larson, who has never and will never be pregnant, if it's a scary time to be a woman.
Larson said it was scary because in this "Obamanation" (har, har) unemployment for women has gone up. He claimed that what's really scary for women is that Planned Parnethood is "now giving women advice on how to have gender selection abortions...so that a young woman who is pregnant with a girl can destroy that girl child with the help of Planned Parenthood and with the help of all these other government agencies..." Larson was obviously referring to the Lila Rose sting videos in which Planned Parenthood workers were doing their job by providing actresses, who claimed they wanted sex selection abortions, with their options regarding abortions. Larson's suggestion that Planned Parenthood is encouraging sex selection abortions just isn't true.
He referenced the "business" about whether "the government going to help me buy my birth control pills or condoms." While the government is setting policy to assist women with contraception, the fact is that this policy applies to women who already have policies which they are, in many cases, paying for - not the government and not Lars Larson who then admonished us slutty gals to pay for our own birth control pills and condoms. The condom comment earns Larson a pants (very white and Christian) on fire as the HHS mandate does not pertain to male contraceptives. Kelly didn't correct him. He later claimed that the Obama HHS mandate will force good Catholic women to buy birth control that includes abortifacients. Score another pants on fire for Larson because the mandate does not include abortion inducing drugs but does include emergency contraception which DOES NOT CAUSE ABORTIONS.
And while Megyn Kelly let Larson run with the falsehoods, she did remind Leslie Marshall that a recent study showed that a majority of women didn't think there was a war on women.
If abortion is criminalized, Catholic women with means and connections, like Megyn Kelly, will get things taken care of while women without means will die in back alley abortions. But it's ironic, don't ya think, that Fox is pushing the bogus right wing meme that there is a war on Christmas while denying the existence of the right wing's attempts to put evil, big gummit right up into a woman's vagina. And if that ain't a war on women, I don't know what is.
As to the “depression” meme, I would guess you’ve also heard of “post-partum depression”—that’s where women actualy give birth but then, for as yet unexplained reasons, they undergo a serious depression that nothing seems to help. Some of these women have attempted to kill, and some have actually succeeded in killing, their children. But for most women who have abortions, the real root of their “depression” tends to be pressure from know-it-alls like you and the rest of the anti-choicers who insist on treating them as ignorant chattel who need someone else to tell them how they need to live.
It’s also interesting that you want to “compare the numbers” in YOUR state, but you don’t tell us what that state is. It’s hard for US to “compare the numbers” when we’re lacking some vital information. Again, there’s a part of your argument that fails that little comparison. I’ve never heard of any state or anti-choice organization protesting a pregnant woman’s “right” to give up a child for adoption; there’s little real stigma placed on a woman who gives up a child for adoption (though most of these women would face difficulty in accessing adequate medical care if groups like Planned Parenthood are defunded by the right-wing) and I’d love to see the stats on how these women feel about knowing there’s a part of them living with others 5 or 10 or 20 years down the road.
