Here we go again... another segment on Fox "news" lying to their viewers about the extreme right-wing anti-abortion bill and the consequences it's going to have on the health of the women in that state.
This Monday it was America Live guest host Alisyn Camerota and Fox regular and resident flame thrower Michelle Malkin's turn: Fox's Michelle Malkin Misleads On The Consequences Of Texas Abortion Bill:
Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin falsely claimed that provisions in Texas' controversial abortion bill would make women safer. Her assertion ignores that the state already performs annual inspections of abortion clinics as well as expert testimony which argues that the legislation would actually "erode women's health."
On the July 8 edition of Fox News' America Live, Malkin joined guest host Alisyn Camerota to discuss the controversial legislation that would outlaw abortion procedures after 20 weeks with exceptions only for the life of the mother, require abortion clinics to meet the same requirements as ambulatory surgical centers, and require abortion providers to have permission to admit patients at a hospital within 30 miles of the provider's facility. Despite these sweeping restrictions, which would be some of the strictest in the country, Malkin claimed that the Texas legislation was simply a question of whether or not abortion providers would "abide by standards that will ensure safety":
According to Dallas News, however, the Texas Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) inspects abortion clinics every year, while it inspects surgical centers only every three years. Furthermore, in 2011, no pregnant females died of abortion-related causes in the state, while there were 116 deaths associated with pregnancy complications.Read on...
Malkin and her ilk know full well the reason for these laws they're passing is to make it impossible for women who are poor to get an abortion, but instead they keep playing the Kermit Gosnell card, as Malkin did in the segment above. Here's more on that from Think Progress: No, Wendy Davis Doesn’t Stand With Kermit Gosnell:
Over the past several weeks, reproductive rights activists in Texas have been engaged in a long-standing battle with the state legislature in an attempt to prevent a package of stringent abortion restrictions from becoming law. On Monday, as the state Senate considered the proposals — which would criminalize abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force the vast majority of the state’s abortion clinics to close — the legislation is once again inspiring public protests from both opponents and supporters.
Students for Life, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest youth pro-life organization,” is among the groups assembling in Austin. The organization sent a busload of abortion opponents to the state capital on Monday, and tweeted a photo of supporters holding signs in opposition to reproductive rights — including several proclaiming “Wendy stands with Gosnell”:
The anti-choice activists are referring to Kermit Gosnell, the illegal abortion provider whose high-profile murder trial recently made national headlines. Abortion opponents have repeatedly attempted to invoke Gosnell’s name to conflate his horrific crimes with all legal abortion services — claiming Gosnell proves that abortion is always an inherently violent, bloody, unsafe procedure. [...]
Furthermore, even though some mainstream media outlets — and virtually every right-wing outlet — have construed the ongoing protests in the Lone Star State as a fight over late-term abortion, that’s not the whole story. The package of abortion restrictions also threatens to close 90 percent of the abortion clinics in Texas, leaving just five clinics in the second largest state in the country. The new clinic regulations won’t actually do anything to make abortion care safer, and the nation’s leading group of OB-GYNs has come out against them. Instead, they will severely limit women’s access to clinics, threatening to effectively ban abortion in the state. And they will disproportionately burden low-income women, who likely won’t be able to afford to travel hundreds of miles to get to a clinic.
If Texas women’s options become so limited, many desperate and economically disadvantaged women may be forced to resort to dangerous measures to terminate a pregnancy. The women who patronized Kermit Gosnell’s illegal Philadelphia-area clinic were driven there out of poverty; many of them likely felt like they had no other choice. Taking away Texas women’s choices will allow future Gosnells to take the same opportunity to prey on vulnerable women.
That’s why Wendy Davis, and women’s health activists across the country, are actually standing up against Gosnell. They are standing up against the state-level abortion policies that deepen economic disparities and drive women further into poverty. They are standing up against the harsh regulations that threaten to close down clinics and make it impossible for women to access safe, legal reproductive care. They are standing up against the increasing reality that American women can only exercise their constitutional right to an abortion as long as they’re not poor. And they’re ultimately working to ensure that the United States remains a country where women aren’t dying from lack of unsafe abortion care, as thousands of women do around the world — and as some women did right here at home, in Gosnell’s unsanitary clinic.
