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GOProud Continues To Proudly Support Republican Attempt To Destroy Women’s Rights

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on January 23, 2011.

01/23/11-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
GOProud has come out in support of the Republican’s bill which would, in essence, obliterate any chance for a woman to get an abortion. The bill that they have advanced does several things, including rewriting what qualifies as federal funding in a massive power grab into people’s lives. When the Republicans talk about wanting smaller government, they never actually mean it. Of course, as far as GOProud is concerned, the rights of anyone but White, Heterosexual, Affluent Men are really irrelevant. Yesterday, they took to Twitter to complain about LGR’s report yesterday.

The bill that the Republicans have put forth would do this:

- It would deny tax credits to employers or other entities that pay for health plans that cover abortion

- It would deny tax credits to individuals or entities that pay for abortion care

- Disallow medical deductions for payments for any health plan that includes abortion coverage or for any medical expenses related to abortion care

-Treat as income any amounts paid for an abortion from a tax-preferred trust or account, such as a health savings account

Of course, the human tole of what it means to make abortion either illegal or impossible to get is something that GOProuds Jimmy LaSalvia and Christopher Barron never actually want to address. To them, this is about tax payer funding, which is their way of making it sound like they aren’t opposed to abortion when, in reality, they are.

Stories have begun to come out of the clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. He performed abortions for thirty years, often in unsanitary conditions. He did not have the training to perform abortions, and often used barbaric methods, including inducing birth and then killing the resultant child.

Davida Johnson had an abortion at Gosnell’s clinic in 2001. At the time, she had a three year old daughter, and after a great deal of soul searching, went to the local Planned Parenthood clinic where she was scared off by the anti-abortion protesters. She said this week “The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death.” She was then referred to Gosnell’s clinic. Part way through the abortion, before the procedure had actually begun, she wanted to back out, but Gosnell refused. She told the Associated Press “I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication.” She paid him $400 in cash for the abortion.

According to the AP report:

A few months after the abortion, she began to have gynecological problems. An examination revealed venereal disease. She blames Gosnell, 69, for the lifelong illness, which she declined to identify, and for the four miscarriages she has subsequently suffered.

Johnson learned last week that Philadelphia prosecutors believe Gosnell frequently delivered late-term babies alive at his clinic, then severed their spines with scissors, and often stored the fetal bodies – along with staff lunches – in refrigerators at the squalid facility. Tiny baby feet, prosecutors said, were discovered in specimen jars, lined up in a macabre collection.

“Did he do that to mine? Did he stab him in the neck?” Johnson asked at her North Philadelphia home. “Because I was out of it. I don’t know what he did to my baby.”

Gosnell’s clinic was also a drug mill. He was the third most prolific prescriber of OxyContin in the state. OxyContin is highly addictive. His practice netted him around $1.8 million a year.

Gosnell’s lack of medical abilities often resulted in perforated uteri, bowels, and cervixes of countless patients. He often ignored postoperative pain and bleeding as well as left foetal parts inside his patients. He also passed venereal and other diseases from patient to patient through unsterilized and blood caked instruments according to the reprot.

According to the AP report:

In one 1999 case, prosecutors said, 20-year-old Marie Smith was sent home after a Gosnell abortion unaware that he had been unable to remove the entire fetus from her uterus. Days later, vomiting and with a swollen abdomen and severe infection, Smith was taken to a hospital, where she was rushed into surgery.

Her mother, Johnnie Mae Smith, said she was shocked at the “nasty and dirty, filthy” conditions in the clinic. When her daughter took ill days later, she called Gosnell.

“I said, ‘What did you do to my daughter? … My daughter’s about to die,’ Smith said. “He said, ‘Take her to the hospital.’”

Gosnell turned up at the hospital with his checkbook, she said, aiming to settle immediately. Instead, she chased him away, vowing to sue. Later, her daughter got $3,000, after lawyer fees, from a $5,000 settlement.

Johnson never sued over the abortion or ensuing venereal disease, but 46 other parties have, including the family of 22-year-old Semika Shaw, who prosecutors said died of sepsis at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in March 2002 two days after Gosnell perforated her uterus and cervix during an abortion.

Even with this power grab by the Republicans, and this attempt to interfere with the rights of people over their irresponsible attempt to rewrite what qualifies as federal funding, abortions will happen. Unfortunately, they will happen at clinics like Gosnell’s instead of in safe locations with qualified doctors. Women will die needlessly, but then again, what does that matter to people who are more concerned about allowing the Republicans to interfere with the lives of people.

GOProud was not happy at the report that LGR gave yesterday. They claim to be more concerned about things like government funding instead of the lives and rights of women. In truth, they are more concerned about sucking up to their lords and masters in the Republican Party who keep them around to try and make it seem like they are more open to minority groups than they really are.