Anyone following the Planned Parenthood/Mo-town issue?

[MountainLaurel]

I'm afraid I haven't been reading the Dominion Post much since they made their online access subscription only. But I'm now using a friend's roommate's login, and have been reading about the debate over Planned Parenthood opening a clinic in Morgantown. Can anyone on the ground in North Central WV provide details and scoop? When did this first come up? Who are the major players in supporting and opposing? What's your take on the chances of it actually happening? Has Wanda Franz spouted off from her ignorant maw yet?

Do tell, do tell.

[wallybarron]

1. Not in Morgantown

or even WV anymore, but it's the same group. West Virginians for Life.

Planned Parenthood Hurts Girls


According to Planned Parenthood, Morgantown needs an abortion clinic. You and I don’t agree. But what can we do?

Let me give you an important update on Planned Parenthood’s activities in our community. On June 25, a regional CEO from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) held an informational meeting in Morgantown. Its purpose: to announce a "feasibility study" to investigate the possibility of bringing a Planned Parenthood clinic into our area.

This is the Planned Parenthood that is the nation’s largest performer of abortions: almost 245,000 of the 1.3 million abortions in our country in 2003. That’s almost 20%! This is the same organization that promotes explicit and degrading sexual education from kindergarten through high school. (And CEO Walter Klausmeier promised that PPFA would attempt to get into local schools.) This is the Planned Parenthood that opposes all parental consent and notification laws for minor girls considering abortion. And this is the Planned Parenthood that is currently being investigated in three states for refusing to report potential cases of statutory rape and child abuse—even though all fifty states require healthcare workers to report any suspicions of such activity.

http://www.westvirginiansforlife.org/

Check out this website. This guy broke away from West Virginians for Life because they weren't agressive enough. He's really scary.

http://lifegauge.org/

[MountainLaurel]

2. Christ, I hate these fucks

Wonder what West Virginians for Life have ever done to help poor women and college students get medical care? Anything to make life more difficult for women and girls, who now have to drive to Pittsburgh or Charleston for a Planned Parenthood or something like it.

[wallybarron]

3. Check this out

Karen A. Cross, executive director of West Virginians for Life, Inc., can speak firsthand about the physical and mental experiences of abortion. “A lot of women feel they have no other choice besides an abortion.”
Karen Cross
Executive Director of West Virginians for Life Inc.
As a teenager, Cross was faced with the choice of whether or not she could have a child and care for it. She was almost 17 years old when she became pregnant.
“I was a teenager and I didn’t think, I just did it,” Cross said. “It was like getting a tooth pulled.”

http://www.da.wvu.edu/archives/011010/news/state_local.html

Karen Cross recently got a job in Washington.

[MountainLaurel]

4. Here's a telling quote

“I was getting involved with the church and was afraid of what might happen,” Cross said.

If you're involved in a church that would do anything to make you worry and afraid about having a child, especially if it's spouting off about the evils of terminating a pregnancy, just maybe that's not such a great church?

:wtf:

[wallybarron]

5. They have done

a great job of organizing. On Pro Choice day at the capitol maybe 20 people show up. On Anti choice day between 300 and 500 show up. They parade with crosses and candles, sing, and lobby hard. For each legislator they recruit they do mass mailings to their constituents. Have tried to organize pro choice events outside of Charleston to no avail. In southern WV over 200 invitations were sent out to a get together/meeting. Not one person showed up. Almost every legislator they have targeted has lost. Those leafleting Sundays before the elections have been very successful.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

6. How much is hypocrisy

To blame? I think of many fundie church girls and their parents I know from high school who were vocally pro-birth and thought abortion was a travesty, yet when THIER 15-year-old got knocked up by her 24-year-old boyfriend, they were headed to Pittsburgh within a day. People who at heart are pro-choice might not realize they are until they need those services.

Or are too many pro-choicers afraid to be vocal about it, lest they lost their jobs or face violence?