Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s confusing comments on the abortion issue, together with a federal judge’s ruling on a North Carolina pro-life law, have put abortion back in the national spotlight during a presidential campaign dominated by economics, as abortion issue activists on either side have gone on offense this week.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles, President Obama’s appointee, ordered a preliminary injunction against a North Carolina law that requires women to see an ultrasound at least four hours before having an abortion, complete with a description of the images. Eagles wrote that the law likely violates the First Amendment, which “generally includes the right to refuse to engage in speech compelled by the government.” Eagles permitted other aspects of the law to stand, including a state “choose life” license plate that will fund crisis pregnancy centers offering abortion alternatives.
That aspect of Eagle’s ruling drew Al Sharpton’s ire last night on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation. Sharpton called the license plate “outrageous” and described the crisis pregnancy centers as “fronts for conservative anti-choice groups.” A representative of NARAL’s North Carolina affiliate, a pro-choice activist group, charged local crisis pregnancy centers with disseminating misleading information — “outright fabricat[ing] things,” Sharpton said in agreement.
He accused the crisis pregnancy centers of making “false claims” about the physical effects of abortion. “[Crisis pregnancy centers] say abortions increase risk of breast cancer; post-abortion stress; abortion is a very risky procedure . . . we can have different opinions, we can’t have different facts,” Sharpton said. He also said that, for crisis pregnancy centers to make such statements, “is immoral [and] should be illegal.”
But of course, abortion is not quite as risk-free as a tonsilectomy. The group Pro-Life Wisconsin released a video today which they say shows an ambulance taking a woman to the hospital for treatment after a “botched abortion.” The video apparently shows abortion clinic staff “laughing, dancing and doing the limbo as the woman was taken away” from the clinic. When the man filming the scene confronts them — “this is what you do when you put a woman in the hospital?” he asked — one staffer tells him to “shut up.” Another apparently says, “you’re lucky [that] it’s not you in the hospital.”
The pro-life group likened the scene to the case of the Philadelphia abortion clinic whose unsanitary and gruesome practices resulted in indictments for murder. Today, two employees of the clinic pleaded guilty to murder after a grand jury indicted them for murdering live-born, viable babies and accused them of “wanton reckless conduct” in the case of a woman who died of an overdose of painkillers.
Disputes between pro-life and pro-choice groups tend to play out in the courts, but Herman Cain has brought both sides back onto the political scene. Following Cain’s series of contradictory comments on abortion, NARAL president Nancy Keenan attacked him for his pro-life positions. At the same time, Cain’s social conservative rival, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., blasted Cain for remarks that sounded pro-choice.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List, summarized the Cain question to The Washington Examiner. “Mr. Cain has never embraced the pro-choice label, only the pro-life one,” Dannenfelser acknowledged. “The only question that remains is what that means. What actions would he take as a pro-life president to lead on the issue?”
Vanity Fair editor Carl Bernstein recently called the ongoing abortion debate “absurd.” But it remains the most divisive issue in American politics — in large part because the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 provisionally resolved the issue judicially, rather than through political action in Congress or state legislatures.
You can see the video released by Pro-Life Wisconsin below.
