The Holy Vote by Ray Suarez

Author:Ray Suarez
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-01-11T06:15:51+00:00

AFTER A LOUD and vicious demonstration outside a clinic providing abortions in Chicago in 1989 (the clinic provided many services, including contraceptive advice, pelvic exams, and prenatal care, in addition to abortions), Joseph Scheidler, back in his organization’s office and plotting future legal strategies, ran down his legislative agenda for me.

Scheidler wanted most forms of contraception made illegal, since he considered them covert forms of abortion. He wanted all abortions made illegal, and doctors and patients who participated in them prosecuted. Finally, he wanted any politicians who tried to fudge on the issue held to account and punished at the polls.

He reserved special scorn for the counterdemonstrators and escorts who helped women run the gauntlet past screaming demonstrators to the clinic doors. In a long conversation with me he compared them to ghouls and vampires: “They love blood. They can’t live without it. They aren’t fulfilled unless they can help these women murder their babies. To them, that’s a success. When they can kill babies.”

By the lights of 1989, the language seemed excessive. Almost two decades later, it does not sound extreme at all. Starting in 1986, Scheidler squared off with the National Organization for Women and abortion clinics in a federal prosecution that tied him up for much of the 1990s.10 He originally prevailed in lower courts, but the case was sent back down by the Supreme Court in 1994. After a trial in 1998, Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League defendants were found guilty of federal racketeering charges, a verdict overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003.

Scheidler has moved from the fringes of the antiabortion movement to, if not exactly its center, at least its more respectable circles over the past twenty years. While all of the antiabortion firepower was once trained on ending pregnancies through surgical procedures, the movement now leads side battles against a wide array of contraceptives.

For example, President George W. Bush’s 2002 nominee for chairman of the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. W. David Hager, was instrumental in a rearguard action blocking the approval of Plan B, emergency contraception, for over-the-counter use.

When Dr. Hager was first picked by the president to chair the committee, the administration was met with a firestorm. The ob-gyn was associated with Focus on the Family’s Physician Resource Council and was well-known for his opposition to abortion. After the heat died down, Dr. Hager was seated as a member of the committee rather than its chairman. When the committee sat in judgment of the petition to move Plan B off the list of drugs available only with a prescription, Dr. Hager was outvoted in a lopsided 23–4 ballot.

Normally, when the FDA advisory committees approve a drug for over-the-counter use, it heads to final approval. In the case of Plan B, Dr. Hager’s own opposition moved him to keep the fight going. He filed an unusual “minority report” very similar to the document he helped prepare for Concerned Women for America condemning Plan B.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.