Throughout the Gosnell trial, Fox News has been parroting anti-choice talking points including the memes that the media wasn't sufficiently covering the trial and that what happened at the Gosnell clinic is typical abortion practice. Now, the anti-choice movement is using a failed anti-abortion Senate resolution, introduced by GOP Sen. Mike Lee, to portray themselves as victims of pro-choice zealotry and Democratic chicanery. So it should come as no surprise that Fox News, in coming to their rescue, would promote Lee's resolution which isn't quite what Fox News is making it out to be. Sunday, Fox News' Shannon Bream provided the requisite "pro-life" spin without reporting on the real substance and ramifications of the resolution which was similarly spun, by alleged "news" host Megyn Kelly, on Friday. Ah, love the smell of fair & balanced in the afternoon!
Kelly reported on Mike Lee's resolution "calling on Congress to investigate and correct abusive, unsanitary, and abusive abortion practices; but Senate Democrats objected and substituted a different plan." She didn't explain that the Democratic resolution called for inspection of all clinics, not just abortion, that provide abusive health care practices. Kelly's conservative guest, right wing talk radio host Chris Plante asserted that Congressional dysfunction is proven by the fact that republicans and democrats can't agree that Dr. Gosnell and these "little houses of horrors" are bad. (That there are other "houses of horror" is part of the anti-choice zeitgeist and not born out any evidence resulting in any other murder charges.) He accused Democrats of wanting to dilute Lee's resolution and turn it into a "giant government program" and being "in lockstep with the abortion industry that they're looking for a way to throw a bucket of cold water on this." He snarked that if it were up to Democrats Ariel Castro would get a "hospitality of the year award."
Kelly explained that Mike Lee and other Republicans thought the resolution was necessary because the state of Pennsylvania, under Republican governor Tom Ridge, neglected to inspect Gosnell's clinic. Kelly claimed that PA Department of Health officials brushed aside concerns about these inspections by saying that "people die" (Really?) and that's why Republicans got involved. After making that statement, she pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes in a look of indignation.
Liberal radio host Stephanie Marshall stated the resolution, in creating legislation based on one occurrence, is pandering to pro-lifers. She noted that those who are pro-choice agree that Gosnell is a butcher. After saying that it is reasonable to expect all health care facilities be regulated, she added that Republicans don't like regulations. Kelly interjected that Senator Lee "wants action." In mocking tones, she described the expansiveness of the Democratic resolution. Her interpretation of the Democratic resolution was that they "didn't want to do anything more than condemn unsanitary practices anywhere as opposed to Mike Lee's resolution that wants action to oversee these clinics where babies getting born alive, according to the prosecutors in the Gosnell case, are being murdered by unscrupulous doctors."
Plante was offended that Marshall had turned this into "an attack on him and those who want regulations." He made the laughable claim that Democrats want to turn the Gosnell case into a "political food fight" and snarked that Democrats love regulations. He made the outrageous claim that the Democrats are "pretending to stand up for women's rights" to get their votes. He made the unfounded claim Democrats don't care about babies who are "having their spines snipped all over the country" in unregulated clinics. Marshall accused Plante of being naive in thinking that clinics not affiliated with abortion are unsafe. She agreed with the Democrats that all clinics should be subject to what Lee wants for just abortion clinics.
As I reported in an earlier thread, Lee's resolution goes beyond "taking action" in that it suggests, based on bogus science, that there should be either federal or state law that bans abortion after 20 weeks. He also stated that "all" Americans belief that life, from conception, should be protected. His resolution also promotes anti-choice positions based on the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War. But as Marshall noted, it's funny that the GOP, which hates regulations, has no problems when it comes to abortion. And Fox News has no problem aiding and abetting these attempts to regulate women's bodies. Fair & Balanced - ya think!
Abortion is legal and it has been REGULATED on every level and around all the edges to make it more difficult than ever.
Gosnell is the exception-not the norm.
Okay. I read that a half-dozen times and I still can’t quite figure out how the GOPers in Congress are going to correct what GOPers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania failed to do in the first place.
Isn’t it the GOP in Congress that continually want to gut programs that would do EXACTLY what the GOP’s “resolution” would supposedly correct? We’ve got fewer USDA inspectors to check meat plants and various farms to ensure our food supply is safe thanks to GOPers who insist the “industries will regulate themselves.” We’ve got fewer OSHA inspections to guarantee safe workplaces and fewer OSHA case handlers covering worker complaints about violations, again thanks to GOPers who insist the “industries will regulate themselves.” And yet, these fuckwads (sorry, I’m in no mood to play nice) seem to think there will be funds readily available to conduct all these “inspections” to ensure that the clinics are up to snuff.
And, of course, these nuts don’t seem to feel it’s necessary to get government inspections of other healthcare facilities (such as dentist offices like the one that made the news a couple of months ago where the instruments weren’t being properly sterilized and some of the anesthesia were expired and some patients actually died).
I wish people would wake up and realize what shitheads these GOPers are and what kind of bullshit FoxNoise continually spews.
As the onerous regulations on abortion clinics mount, we will see more and more of these illegal clinics, because legal ones won’t be able to operate under the impossible financial weight of these laws that single out abortion providers.