Anti-Choice Activists Save "Babies," Hurt Young Girls
by Robin Marty, RH Reality Check
April 19, 2011 - 9:23pm (Print)
The anti-abortion activists who work the sidewalks and "pregnancy help centers" across the street from or adjacent to women's clinics are known for using their proximity to make contact with women and girls seeking abortions to try and talk them out of their choices. They justify any tactic that they try, no matter how personal, vicious or unwanted, as a positive because they are trying to save a fetus, and the mother and her emotional or physical well-being is of less importance.
Even when one of those "mothers" is just a child herself.
Via KGET.com:
Most people would say praying to end abortion is harmless. But, [Terry] Palmquist [of The Life House Pregnancy Help Center] has other tactics as well. This week, she confronted a 14-year-old girl entering the clinic about her decision to abort her fetus. They exchanged phone numbers and talked about options.
Out of fear the teen wanted to stay anonymous, but over the phone had this to say. "I was thinking that I would be giving up my childhood and wouldn't be able to finish school cause I'd have a baby to watch, and I wouldn't be able to afford a baby and go to school at the same time."
But, while the young girl was sitting in the clinic, Palmquist sent her a text message and said "if you go through with this, we've named your baby Britney."
Ultimately the abortion took place, and Palmquist displayed the name on a pink cross. "I don't want to be overly hard on the mom, but if we believe that abortion is killing a baby it's no different than killing a baby in your arms, said Palmquist."
...
17 News asked, how do you defend this isn't a cruel thing to do to someone? "I don't think it's cruel because I think the sooner you deal with it the easier it is in the healing," says Palmquist.
The abortion was finished. There was nothing that the Palmquist could have done afterwards to bring back the fetus. And the girl was barely in her teens. But it was important for Palmquist to make sure that the girl was as emotionally hurt as possible once it was over.
Anti-choice activists like to say that abortion causes depression, grief and anxiety, but how much of that is being caused by the activists themselves?
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"I don't think it's cruel because I think the sooner you deal with it the easier it is in the healing," says Palmquist.
If this woman was a professional counselor she would lose her license for this kind of stunt. As an amateur with no training whatsoever, she doesn't have any business inserting herself into other people's 'grief work'. Weird how she thinks her religious justifies her hurting other people and insulates her from taking responsibility for doing so. Terry Palmquist should be greeted with hisses of contempt wherever she goes.
consent.I hope this was investagated.
If her boyfriend is also 14 he's below the age of consent as well. Do you want them both arrested for sexually abusing each other and both given sex offender records?
I would point out that if as a person below the age of consent she needs special protection and consideration, having some lunatic anti-abortion religious nut send her guilt-trip texts is particularly outrageous.
Yeah, and if her boyfriend was 11 years of age or 17 years of age he was still under the age of consent within that state, but this also means that he couldn't be charged with a misdemeanour, either.
Funny antichoicers who rail against clinics under-reporting statutory rape don't seem to ask why crisis pregnancy centers don't report it either. Laws about teens, pregnancy, and counseling seem to slip through the cracks at CPCs, even though it's often the people who run the CPCs that go after Planned Parenthood for "covering up" underage sex. Why do we think that is? Oh right! There's a loophole, because contrary to what they'd have you believe, CPCs are NOT medical facilities, they're NOT licensed counseling centers, and they're NOT subject to any of the rules and regulations that clinics are subjected to, including HIPAA I might add.
For any CPC faux-counselor that wants to see Planned Parenthood calling the police every time they see a pregnant teenager walk through their doors, all I have to say is... You First. You wanna be a legitimate facility, you want to be included in public health department resource lists, you want to be listed as medical facilities in the phone book? GET LICENSED AND ACT LIKE ONE. Of course you can't do that, because if you did that you'd have to start giving out legitimate medical information and abiding by confidentiality codes, and no we can't have that.
In most states, including the one in which I live and worked for Planned Parenthood, the laws regarding reporting of underage sexual contact is much different than the laws regarding mandatory reporting for teachers, law-enforcment and social service workers.
Medical confidentiality is considered paramount to patients getting the best care possible. This applies to minors as well. The law specifically protects minors' confidentiality rights to sexual, drug treatment and mental health care in my state. Minors can get birth control, HIV testing and treatment, drug counseling, or treatment for depression with their privacy protected. The thinking is reasonable and necessary-young people often will go without this care if they believe their parents or guardians must be told. (Most of the time, teens will involve a parent or other trusted family member in this care.)
There are clear instances when medical providers must report, usually involving abuse, violence or in a minor's pregnancy a partner over a certain age range. Many people who think these clinics have been "caught" not reporting were usually following the laws that give minors more confidentiality rights for certain types of medical care. But nobody seems to be mentioning that. Interesting.
PS: Anyone in health care who does not follow the reporting requirements should be retrained, disciplined or fired depending on why the error occured. In most states the reporting requirements for minors' health care are complicated and often contradictory. In my state, different states' attorneys came to different conclusions about the same set of reporting laws. All medical professionals who treat minors are bound by these reporting laws, not just Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers.
Most pediatricians and gynecologists treat teenagers and prescribe contraceptives, order STD tests and treatments, administer preganancy tests and some also perform abortions. They are required to protect their minor patients' confidentiality in these medical matters in exactly the same way Planned Parenthood is. I haven't heard about any efforts to shut down pediatricians and OB/GYNs who provide the same medical services to teens as Planned Parenthood. Where's the outrage about them?
Her family knew she got the abortion, I would assume they knew the details, and that that if there was any coercion or abuse, they would have called the police. It's hard to understand why anti-abortion activitists are so suspicious that girls who are pregnant must be victims of abuse instead of pregnant because they're dating and in love.
It kind of makes me wonder about the character of the men in their circle.
Crowepps, it also makes me wonder why they advocate so vehemently for parental notification and consent laws, then. Even if young girls who are pregnant are 'permitted' to seek a judicial bypass, wouldn't that still make it more likely that their pregnant state would be discovered by their abuser, after all?
The whole point of their 'concern' is to put girls in a position where they have to go through pregnancy, and in addition to force the girls to implicate who "took advantage of them" so that person can be punished as well. These people are just really focused on punishing and hurting people, as Ms. Phony Counselor proved with her icky naming the fetus/cross stunt.
There isn't anything in the world that makes it more clear what the character is of the people on both sides of this issue than the fact that the anti-abortion nuts burn down medical offices and tell clinic receptionists that they know where their children go to school, and the pro-choice advocates actually allow nasty exhibits like that to remain in place, the revolting obscenities on their signs, the shaming praying for God to forgive people, the stupidity of the fake graveyard. Considering the incredible offensiveness of the whole in-your-face operation, it just astonishes me that everyone has refrained from so much as tossing a match.
and in addition to force the girls to implicate who "took advantage of them" so that person can be punished as well.
As usual, they have the same problem with recognizing that there is no corollary for men to pregnancy that is as equally enforceable and punishable on them....
It's hard to understand why anti-abortion activitists are so suspicious that girls who are pregnant must be victims of abuse instead of pregnant because they're dating and in love.
They're more upset that abortions cover up rape and sex abuse than they are about rape, because their whole point is that girls and women shouldn't be able to hide the fact that they've been raped, or had consensual sex either. That's why they're also against contraception: just one more way for people to avoid the scarlet letter.
One thing I would like to add, though, to the whole scarlet letter idea:
however, it isn't supposed to be rape if we didn't fight hard enough, remember? The way I hear it, if we didn't die fighting them off (along with the requisit broken bones, and bruises, and crushed internal organs), we were asking for it, and therefore it must have been consensual, (God, I just threw up a little writing that!)
My point is, that being raped, abused or molested still is not a good enough reason in the anti-women crowd's mind for an abortion... even if the kid is 14-- let alone if she's grown, there was a gang-rape, it was her ex-husband, whatever. I honestly think they want to brand women with a DS on our foreheads the moment we are born (DS for dirty slut). Then all the slut-shaming would be true, "see, see, it's right there on her face!!!"
~ In Christianity it is worse for a woman or girl to be sexually active, then it is for a man to be a rapist, even a child rapist.
In my Christian family it was worse for me to say I have been sexually abused then it was for men to beat their wives and rape their female family members. Men were entitled to not be criticized, women and girls were not entitled to not be beat and raped.
I grew up in the southern Baptist convention.
My bible thumping grandfather loved to hear about how some under age girl had been raped, gotten married, or was pregnant. It was his porn, of course he would pretend around strangers like it was a bad thing.
One of my Christian uncles bragged to me when I was a teenager that he had kept my aunt pregnant so much by the age of eighteen she had had three children, this really turned the men in my family on. ~
There are loathesome people in this world, and then there are the uber- loathesome. Truly vile.
And possibly actionable?
young to be sexualy active/
I think 14 is too young to be sexualy active/
And I think 10 is too young to attend university, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few exceptional kids who move faster than others.
Duly noted, Lauraj. Still none of your business, though, what that 14 year old does, and your opinions likely don't matter one whit to her.
Additionally, 14 is too young to have sex, but it's just a dandy age to be forced to carry a baby to term?
It's certainly below the average age however we know absolutely nothing about the circumstances in this case, because the focus of the article was not 'should this girl be having sex' but instead 'if children have sex are anti-abortion activitists allowed to torment them'. Your focus on the circumstances of the sex comes across as slut-shaming, that it doesn't matter if a stranger felt entitled to be cruel to her because she shouldn't have been having sex in the first place.
she is a slut,but,because of her age,I wondered if it was truly consentuAl.
I'm glad to hear that, and your concern over whether she's being exploited is noted. I'm sure her family, who were aware she was getting the abortion and who are apparently aware of the circumstances, would report it if she was.
So, since that's settled, do you have any comment on the actual focus of the article? Do you think CPC's should be using these tactics? Do you think it "helps people start healing" to get texts like that and have crosses erected to memoralize their abortions? Do you think religious fanatics have some special right of access to people they want to send on guilt trips?
~ What this woman did to this fourteen year old girl is sexual harassment, she is badgering the girl into having unwanted vaginal pain because it gives this pervert pro-life woman pleasure.
No one should be allowed to force girls under the age of eighteen into having sex, getting married, or giving birth. It is use and abuse of under age girls bodies and vaginas.
Or badger and harass them into having sex, getting married, or giving birth.
Pro-lifers are sadomasochistic perverts, they even direct their misogynistic perversion at under age girls.
Pro-lifers say someone will go to hell if they are not a christian, I would rather go to hell then be one of them.
They are nothing but sex-offenders. They remind me of every pervert that would not leave me alone when I was a kid. ~
But, while the young girl was sitting in the clinic, Palmquist sent her a text message and said "if you go through with this, we've named your baby Britney."
My, my, that is mighty arrogant shit right there. Who is "we" and who gave them naming rights?
"Thanks, but I already named it Princess Barbie Unicorn Cheerios. Because I'm fucking FOURTEEN."
I find it funny that this woman feels that her tactics will "help" the young lady in question to heal, when in fact, the vast majority of academic literature cites external pressure (guilt, stigmatization, etc.) as the main cause of any psychological trauma associated with elective abortion. If it weren't for these crappy societal institutions and their agents, there would be no reason to heal. It would just be a decision, and there are few other personal decisions that necessitate (recklessly informal) therapy afterwards.
But I doubt a review of academic literature is high on Ms. Palmquist's to-do list, either.
