Jindal signed House Bill 636 by Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe, into law Wednesday in front of a crowd at the First Baptist Church of West Monroe.
The law requires that signs be posted around abortion facilities and include pertinent information about a woman’s rights, including the fact that it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion, that the child’s father must provide child support, that certain agencies can assist them during and after the pregnancy and that adoptive parents can pay some of the medical costs.
Physicians also must inform patients about their options and provide them with a link to the Department of Health and Hospitals website featuring information about abortion alternatives and informed consent.
Jindal said the new law marks another significant step forward in the effort to protect the innocent lives of the unborn.
[. . .]
Jindal said he couldn’t understand why anyone would be opposed to such a law considering even criminals receive the same privilege.
“When officers arrest criminals today, they are read their rights,” he said. “Now if we’re giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion.”
(Via: ProWomanProLife)
July 11th, 2011 | 10:39 am
ProWoman-ProLife? Education? If pro-lifers want to dispute on the grounds of what’s good for the woman, and educating the woman, then this is something pro-choicers are sure to win. For young women who decide to have a baby during high school for example, the statistics are extremely discouraging. I wonder how it will affect their choice when they know what their economic and relationship future looks like.
On another note, are you sure it’s a good idea for the pro-life cause by putting signs up about how the father is required to pay child support? Two decades of monthly payments might change the father’s mind about abortion.
July 11th, 2011 | 11:13 am
Not if the father is the one pushing the mother to get the abortion in the first place.
July 11th, 2011 | 11:13 am
“Two decades of monthly payments might change the father’s mind about abortion.”
But since it’s also illegal to coerce a mother into abortion, and the signs also say that, the benefit of those signs is to inform the mother that she doesn’t have to go it alone, financially.
But it’s definitely pro-woman, because half the babies in question are women-to-be.
July 11th, 2011 | 11:36 am
This would seem to raise the same First Amendment issues that caused a federal judge to strike down a Baltimore law requiring certain signage in pro-life crisis pregnancy centers:
If the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees with Judge Garbis’s reasoning, it seems to me both abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers will be free from government-mandated signage.
July 11th, 2011 | 11:59 am
Mandated speech is not going to fly in the courts. This law is DOA.
July 11th, 2011 | 12:11 pm
On another note, are you sure it’s a good idea for the pro-life cause by putting signs up about how the father is required to pay child support? Two decades of monthly payments might change the father’s mind about abortion.
The vast majority of women walking into a facility that provides abortion are not likely being followed by a man on his knees, begging her to change her mind. Very often the man is encouraging her to eliminate the child.
An argument that might work better for you is that a woman who has doubts, sees that, and reflects on two decades of court fights with the father, might see her doubts vanish completely.
July 11th, 2011 | 1:50 pm
Re Chuck:
“Caution: Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health”
July 11th, 2011 | 2:18 pm
Mike Melendez,
There are different standards for commercial speech. I don’t believe requiring abortion providers or crisis pregnancy centers to display certain signage is considered commercial speech, but warning labels on products are.
Interestingly, one of the complaints against the law requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to display signs whose wording was dictated by government was that abortion providers were not required to post analogous signs. Now it looks like the pro-life side is trying to get pro-life signage in abortion clinics, and the pro-choice side is trying to get pro-choice signage in crisis pregnancy centers. It seems to me that Judge Garbis’s statement, which I quoted above, makes sense: “Whether a provider of pregnancy-related services is ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice,’ it is for the provider — not the government — to decide when and how to discuss abortion and birth-control methods.”
Of course, no doubt each side sees its own proposed signs as right and the other side’s proposed signs as wrong. I hope the First Amendment wins out here over the agenda of both sides.
July 11th, 2011 | 2:22 pm
Over the years many women have related to me their personal horror story, explaining how devastated they were, long after aborting, when they learned more about the development of the fetus. They had been told it was simply a matter of a “mass of tissue” being expelled. They were later traumatized when they discovered, in one way or another, how baby-like that “mass of tissue” was at the point in their pregnancy at which they aborted. One woman discovered this in the course of her training to become a nurse. She quit. She did not want to be a part of a medical profession such as she had discovered ours has become. A small minority are, quite simply, dishonest killers. I think the problem for her was that the majority silently tolerates the minority within their ranks.
We are obligated to provide women all the information they need to make a truly informed decision. To fail to do that is a very cruel injustice.
July 11th, 2011 | 2:56 pm
@David Nickol,
What distinguishes “Commercial Speech”? I would think claims by the providers of a product or service, but I don’t know. Can you enlighten us? Both offerings here — pre-natal services and cigarettes — are informational, though it seems as though the Pro-Choice side wants the Pro-Life side to list what they don’t provide rather than information on the direct services offered.
July 11th, 2011 | 3:32 pm
I think it was brilliant of feminists to press for child support and gov’t funding. It’s a double-win. By spreading out the burden of child bearing, they ensured that people who might otherwise have been anti-abortion to see the benefits of abortion. Even the far-right tea party is more concerned about budget issues and whereas issues like abortion fall by the wayside. We have to wonder if that’s because of their concern about women’s rights, or is that because birth control and abortion will save the government money by having less kids to take care of.
July 11th, 2011 | 5:49 pm
Jeremy,
Check your facts. Every study has shown that increased access to birth control and abortion has caused an increase in crisis pregnancies. The idea that access to birth control and abortion reduces pregnancies is fallacy; in fact, increased access leads to increased sexual activity, leading to increased pregnancies.
July 11th, 2011 | 6:31 pm
Every study has shown that increased access to birth control and abortion has caused an increase in crisis pregnancies.
Erin,
Cite three such studies.
July 11th, 2011 | 6:49 pm
What distinguishes “Commercial Speech”? I would think claims by the providers of a product or service, but I don’t know. Can you enlighten us?
Mike Melendez,
My degree comes from the Google School of Law. I would have to research the topic to say much more than I have. But I do know that it has been ruled constitutional for the government to require all kinds of labeling on products. From what I have read, commercial speech (such as advertising) was not considered to be protected by the First Amendment at all until the 1970s.
I do know that South Dakota has a law requiring doctors to read a “script” to women seeking abortions that informs them the fetus is “a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” and that law was upheld by a federal court.
July 11th, 2011 | 7:08 pm
“We have to wonder if that’s because of their concern about women’s rights, or is that because birth control and abortion will save the government money by having less kids to take care of.”
Or we could just apply Occam’s Razor and decide that because their main focus is on taxes and spending, the reason they’re not as big on social issues is because social issues aren’t taxes and spending. But it would be harder to feel superior if we consider them simplistically single-minded rather than nasty.
July 11th, 2011 | 10:45 pm
So I googled the relationship between birth control and abortion. Here’s a WSJ article that sums it up pretty well,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703757504575194191495081682.html.
The main points are that, in the US anyway:
* the number of unplanned pregnancies has remained fairly constant at about 3 million per year
* about one million of those end in abortion
* nearly half of the unplanned pregnancies, about 48%, were with women who had used some form of birth control in the month before becoming pregnant
* other sites, not the WSJ article, said that, of those, about 70% of them had used the birth control incorrectly or inconsistently.
Several of the pro-choice sites argued that greater availability of birth control, especially dispensing the pill in one-year supplies as opposed to one-month supplies, would lower abortion rates, but apparently no studies confirm this yet. On the other hand, Physicians for Life argues that ‘birth control prevents abortion’ is a straw man because liberalization of abortion laws is greatest in those countries that do the most to promote birth control. But everybody agreed that consistent use of birth control and abortion decisions are very complicated. Apparently people are not very rational when it comes to sexual behavior. (Shocker, I know.)
Another couple of things that were striking:
* most sites consistently referred to the birth control pill and IUD’s as ‘contraception’ even though, as some Christian sites point out, they do not prevent conception at all, and are in fact ‘abortifacents’ because they cause the woman’s body to reject the fertilized egg;
* several pro-choice websites lamented the roughly 80,000 women around the world who die every year from ‘unsafe abortions’ (as do we all, I’m sure) while passing over without comment the one million abortions performed every year in the US alone.
It’s all very sad. Bottom line, there is very little evidence that greater access to birth control by itself lowers abortion rates, or vice versa, but rather the two things go hand in hand, and people who support one usually support the other.
The most remarkable thing, to me anyway, is how everybody seems to assume that you should be able to have sex without the possibility of pregnancy, a notion that is routinely contradicted by reality.
July 11th, 2011 | 11:00 pm
And I think the signs are great. How can getting more information about your legal rights be bad?
July 12th, 2011 | 12:24 am
David Nickol,
If birth control reduces abortion rates, why are abortion rates still relatively high, even as birth control is widely used? The fact is that abortion serves as back-up birth control for many women, and the way to reduce it is to restrict it as much as possible. States with more restrictions on abortion have lower abortion rates.
July 12th, 2011 | 9:56 am
I’m not a lawyer, but I would be very surprised if the mandated signage was unconstitutional. It seems like you can’t buy anything these days without having some government-mandated legalese attached via sticker or whatnot. And not just prescription drugs or cigarettes, even things like children’s toys and mattresses.
July 12th, 2011 | 12:23 pm
If birth control reduces abortion rates, why are abortion rates still relatively high, even as birth control is widely used?
Mike P.,
Exactly what the relationship is between contraceptives and abortion, I don’t pretend to know, and I think it may be impossible to sort it all out. It does not seem unreasonable to me to assume contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies and consequently prevent abortions.
I would point out that the abortion rate in the United States peaked in 1990. I don’t think it is crazy to think that contraception is partially responsible for declining abortion rates. I have not heard any pro-life advocates arguing that Americans are becoming more virtuous in matters of sexuality. Also, in many developed countries, the birth rate is very low, including in Catholic Poland, where abortions are prohibited.
July 12th, 2011 | 2:54 pm
Hello, David Nickol,
You wrote:
“Exactly what the relationship is between contraceptives and abortion, I don’t pretend to know, and I think it may be impossible to sort it all out. It does not seem unreasonable to me to assume contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies and consequently prevent abortions.”
Because of the subtle, most often entirely unnoticed, shift in one’s views that takes place when one begins using contraceptives, which is that the new, innocent human life brought about by sexual activity went from being the unsurprising and entirely natural consequence of that activity to being a mistake. We do away with mistakes. This leads to abortion when contraceptives fail. And contraceptive use fails very often among young people without the maturity to use them consistently. The contraceptives make them think promiscuity is without consequence. They then become more consistent about promiscuity than they are about contraceptive use. The net result is lots of “mistakes” needing to be “fixed.” This results in a higher abortion rate than you would have with a non-contracepting populace who still made the connection between sexuality and reproduction – and responsibly dealt with that reality. Instead sex is seen as a recreational sport only and its natural consequence becomes a “sports injury” we let the doctor quickly repair so we can get back in the game. We tend to forget that each time that happens somebody gets killed.
July 12th, 2011 | 5:00 pm
I meant to say, “*Contraception leads to abortion* because of the subtle, most often entirely unnoticed, shift in one’s views that takes place when one begins using contraceptives, which is that the new, innocent human life brought about by sexual activity went from being the unsurprising and entirely natural consequence of that activity to being a mistake.”
If I focus on not skipping words in what I write, since I tend do that, “seeing” them when I proof read even though they aren’t there, I end up end not composing complete sentences. ;o)
July 12th, 2011 | 5:41 pm
“This leads to abortion when contraceptives fail. And contraceptive use fails very often among young people without the maturity to use them consistently. The contraceptives make them think promiscuity is without consequence. They then become more consistent about promiscuity than they are about contraceptive use. The net result is lots of “mistakes” needing to be “fixed.” This results in a higher abortion rate than you would have with a non-contracepting populace who still made the connection between sexuality and reproduction – and responsibly dealt with that reality.”
Wrong logic. Countries like the Netherlands have low rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. They also have rates of teen sex comparable to the US. There are many reasons for the difference, but one might be their comprehensive national health care.
They also have low rates of church attendance, but that surely isn’t a factor.
July 12th, 2011 | 8:30 pm
The Netherlands also legally permits euthanasia for patients over the age of 12. However, there have been cases of the euthanization of even younger children. Apparently, prosecutors don’t press charges if the “Groningen Protocol”, developed by Eduard Verhagen of the University Medical Center Groningen, is followed. This ability to discard burdensome human life may also be linked to low abortion rates, and is definitely a consequence of low rates of church attendance.
The culture of death has developed so insidiously and persistently, going back to the eugenics movement, that most people in the modern world don’t realize how radically things have changed. Thank God we have good leaders like JP2 and Benedict who can articulate our opposition to this anti-human devilry.
July 12th, 2011 | 10:20 pm
Hello, Lewis,
The following is from a Medscape article:
Conference Report – Updates in Contraception: World’s Lowest Teen Pregnancy Rate: How Do the Dutch Do It?
It can be found here:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408927_5
“Counseling is the key. This leitmotif echoed throughout Dr. Van Lunsen’s presentation: education, not medical interventions, had made the difference. He attributed the success in The Netherlands to 4 principal factors: liberal sexual attitudes, excellent sex education, free supplies of contraceptives, and legal abortion. He noted that the first factor was especially important for healthcare providers.”
The article is propaganda attempting to make hedonism sound virtuous, thinly disguised as an objective, professional report. Even so, it ends up admitting that “legal abortion” is a factor in the Dutch “success.”
July 13th, 2011 | 1:08 am
Let me get this straight. You said that contraception leads to unplanned pregnancies and then to abortion.
And then you produce an article that says Dutch contraception doesn’t produce unplanned pregnancies and that the most important factor in the low teen pregnancies is counseling.
So I guess you really were wrong.
July 13th, 2011 | 3:01 am
Hello, Lewis,
I thought it would be apparent that I didn’t agree with the article. It was just interesting to me that the Dutch “success” was attributed in part to the practice of routinely taking the lives of innocent human beings, which they euphemistically refer to as “legal abortion.” Those abortions are no doubt taking place for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
Inconsistently using the pill often ends in surgical abortion. Most contraceptive pills are abortifacients, so consistently using the pill also often ends in abortion as well. These contraceptives, when they don’t prevent conception, still create a hostile environment that prevents the newly conceived human being from thriving. So Mom and Dad have no idea that they were parents for a short while.
No matter how you look at it, contraceptive use leads to abortion.
July 13th, 2011 | 9:32 am
“It seems like you can’t buy anything these days without having some government-mandated legalese attached via sticker or whatnot. And not just prescription drugs or cigarettes, even things like children’s toys and mattresses.”
And the current editorial staff of First Things have no problem with government mandated speech, as long as it conforms with their opinions.
July 13th, 2011 | 9:33 am
…or government-mandated anything.
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