The pro-life movement around the world thinks it is saving lives. But in fact it is helping to end them.

Courtesy of the Thomas Reuters Foundation:  

Unsafe abortion kills nearly 50,000 women a year, making it one of the major preventable causes of maternal mortality, yet many countries, including the United States and Spain, are trying to impose tighter legal restrictions on abortion, according to Ipas, a global NGO that works to advance women’s sexual and reproductive rights. 

There are an estimated 22 million unsafe abortions around the world every year, mainly in developing countries, and over the past 20 years unsafe abortions have killed more than 1 million women and girls globally and injured 100 million, Ipas president and CEO Elizabeth Maguire said. 

At present, “47,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions - the equivalent of 200 jumbo jet planes crashing with no survivors every year,” Maguire said. “It’s intolerable that these deaths and injuries continue to occur in the 21st century.”

In many of these countries religious groups actively discourage, and even outlaw abortion, forcing desperate women to seek a solution to their "problem" elsewhere.

Without access to regulated medical facilities many of these women wind up mutilated, rendered sterile, or dead.

And where abortions are legally permitted, the number of procedures do not go up, they go down.

“Where abortion laws are liberalised, the number of people having abortions is lower,” said Zane Dangor, special adviser to South Africa’s social development minister and a member of that country’s delegation to the ICPD. 

The frightening thing is that, especially in America, the very organizations which work to reduce unwanted pregnancies, like Planned Parenthood, are vilified and driven out of business all in the name of preserving a potential life, while often jeopardizing an already viable, and productive life instead.

Not only that but many of the women seeking an abortion are already mothers, who are unable, or unwilling, to care for another child.

Their death not only affect them, it affects the children left behind.

Outlawing abortion, or making it more difficult to attain, does NOT end abortion. It only increases the chances that when an abortion is performed it will end not one life, but two.

Louisiana lawmakers launch audit to prove that Planned Parenthood is using tax payer dollars to pay for abortions. Prove just the opposite instead.

Courtesy of The Times-Picayune:

 Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has not been using government funds to provide or recommend abortions in Louisiana, according to a report released Monday morning by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. 

"We found no indication that Planned Parenthood had recommended that a patient have an abortion or had performed an abortion for patients in our sample," said Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera in a letter to state Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, and state Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe. 

Martiny and Hoffman sponsored legislation last year that called for a widespread investigation and monitoring of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to see if it was using public funding to recommend or provide abortions. The Legislature passed Martiny and Hoffman's resolutions overwhelmingly. 

Planned Parenthood does not currently offer abortions at its sites in Louisiana, but the organization is building a new facility in New Orleans, where it has said it will provide the procedure. 

Martiny and Hoffman pushed their legislation, in part, because Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had been accused of using Medicaid funds inappropriately in Texas. The organization settled in a civil suit over the matter last summer, but has continued to deny any wrongdoing in that case. 

The Louisiana auditor's office examined 26,000 Planned Parenthood claims that qualified for Medicaid reimbursements and found that all the payments were made for allowable procedures. Within the 26,000 claims, the auditor identified 22 patients who suffered miscarriages and reviewed six of those cases, where no abortion counseling was offered. 

"Based on the file reviews, we did not find any indication that Planned Parenthood recommended an abortion or performed an abortion for these patients," Purpera wrote in his letter to state legislators.

What? Does this mean that Planned Parenthood was actually telling the truth and using government funds to do things such as provide birth control, educate women about STD's, and provide cancer screenings?

This is very important as it is part of the conservative's coordinated efforts to undermine Planned Parenthood, because in their mind it is an abortion mill even though providing termination of pregnancies only accounts for 3% of the services they provide.

The conservatives have successfully used misinformation and scare tactics in places like Texas to support slashing funds and essentially driving clinics out of business.

The truth is that Planned Parenthood has had a dramatic effect on the number of unintended pregnancies, and therefore greatly reduced the number of abortions in this country.

IF the conservatives were really interested in keeping the number of abortions to a minimum, instead of forcing pregnant women to give birth to children they are unprepared to raise, they would be working to provide Planned Parenthood with all they funds they could possibly use and trumpeting their successes far and wide.

In anti-abortion zeal Texas Republicans cut funds to family planning clinics, now scrambling to replace funding with realization those cuts may result in 24,000 additional births at a cost to taxpayers of 273 million.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The fight to restore family-planning financing that was cut from the Texas budget in the last legislative session has taken a turn toward primary care. Republican state senators have proposed adding $100 million to a state-run primary care program specifically for women’s health services, an effort that could help avoid a political fight over subsidizing specialty family-planning clinics. 

“It’s a much better way to treat the women because they don’t just have family-planning issues,” said Senator Robert Deuell, Republican of Greenville, a family physician who has advocated an increase in primary-care services for women. 

Using taxpayer dollars to finance family-planning services has become politically thorny in Texas, largely because of Republican lawmakers’ assertions that the women’s health clinics providing that care are affiliated with abortion providers. In the fiscal crunch of 2011, the Legislature cut the state’s family-planning budget by two-thirds, with some lawmakers claiming that they were defunding the “abortion industry.” Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, found that more than 50 family-planning clinics had closed statewide as a result. 

Now, amid estimates that the cuts could lead to 24,000 additional 2014-15 births at a cost to taxpayers of $273 million, lawmakers are seeking a way to restore financing without ruffling feathers.

Oops, I guess perhaps Texas Republicans did not realize that the cost of allowing every possible human life to be born was so damn costly.

“There’s an advantage to guiding that money to the family planning, that preventive care piece, because that’s where the cost savings occur,” said Janet Realini, leader of the Texas Women’s Healthcare Coalition.

Yeah no kidding.

Of course Planned Parenthood could have told them that, except Texas cut funding to them, which is essentially what drove many of these clinics out of business.

Thankfully there may be some help coming to Texas through Obamacare. That will provide funding for family planning services and access to contraception, which clearly Texas is in dire need of receiving.

What's that you say? The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has rejected the Affordable Care Act?

Well fuck Texas then. Ya'll are just reaping what you done sowed.

Gee I wonder how many of those 24,000 births are to people whose skin might be less than lily white, and who are predisposed to vote Democratic? It is quite possible that decisions like this might hasten Texas's emergence as a solidly blue state much earlier than previously predicted.

Good job shit kickers!