From: forgach@noao.edu (Suzanne Forgach)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Mississippi Doctors want Supreme Court to end 24-hour delay
Date: 9 Oct 92 20:04:01 GMT
Organization: National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson, AZ, USA
Originator: forgach@gemini.tuc.noao.edu

From article by bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (J H Woodyatt):
>
> _San_Francisco_Chronicle_, October 3, 1992 (Page A6):
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A completely impartial and unbiased source, I'm sure.
(snicker)

>           The Mississippi Law originally was to take effect
>           in September 1991, but a federal judge barred its
>           enforcement pending a decision on the lawsuit.
>           The New Orleans appeals court allowed the law to
>           take effect when it dismissed the lawsuit in
>           August.
> 
>           Since then, the appeal filed yesterday said,
>           ``Mississippi abortion providers have seen the
>           number of women obtaining abortions plummet by
>           more than 50 percent.''


50%!!  Good Lord!  Halleluiah!   Let's repeat this in all 50 states!


>           The law creates an undue burden in Mississippi,
>           even if it might not in Pennsylvania, the appeal
>           said.  


More likely a drain on the pocketbooks of Mississippi abortionists!


>           Mississippi has only three abortion
>           clinics, and most residents -- many of them poor
>           -- must travel long distances to get an abortion,
>           it said.


Why don't they just _ask_ these women why they don't come back??

My bet would be that it __ain't__ finances and "undue burdens", at all, but
the simple fact that, relieved of the abortionists' hard sell and rush jobs,
they simply changed their minds, and their hearts, in favor of their children.


>           The mandatory delay has led to increased
>           surveillance and harassment of women seeking
                             ^^^^^^^^^^
>           abortions, the appeal said.  

Crap on crackers, as I'm sure only "The San Francisco Chronicle"
could dish up.


>           And anti-abortion
>           advocates have used patients' license plate
>           numbers to get their names and addresses and
>           contact them during the waiting period.


Perhaps they simply talk to them as they walk out of their initial appointment.
Not too hard to do if you're waiting outside on the sidewalk, and people
aren't hurrying past in their shame of what they're about to do.


> I wonder -- assuming the appeal isn't rife with lies and half-truths,

Well, I'm assuming it is.


> how could the Supreme Court not decide that the waiting period does
> not amount to an `undue burden?'

By deciding that public access to license plate identities is where the
"burden" is.    In a great many states, Woody, laws have been passed
making such information completely UNavailable to any Tom, Dick, or
Harry who asks for it, simply because MURDERS have been committed by people 
who just didn't like the way somebody else was driving, and obtained
the name and address from the MVD, went to the residence, and blew them away.


> I would like to see the opinions of some of our regular anti-abortion
> posters regarding the news clipping quoted above, and specifically, I
> would like to see a defense of the charge that using license plate
> numbers to get names and addresses of clinic patients 

I am not going to defend getting information through license plates.  For
the reasons stated above, I don't think license plate identities should
be available in any state.

However, simply following the patients off the property, and offering them
prenatal help, maternity care, and an ear to listen to, is COMPLETELY
honorable, compassionate, and within reason!


> and contacting
> them during the mandatory waiting period is an immoral invasion of
> privacy which amounts to harassment, and that such harassment is
> essentially misogynistic in character.

This is malarky.  OBVIOUSLY, since the article states that a full 50% of
Mississippi women now cancel their abortions after scheduling them, these
women are VERY RECEPTIVE to the pro-life help being offered them.  I guarantee
none of THEM call it "harrassment".   Only the abortionists, worried about
their fat wallets getting skinny, do.


> J H Woodyatt

Suzanne Forgach