In an op-ed appearing last week in The Washington Times, Denise Burke, vice president of legal affairs at Americans United for Life, says 2011 was a bad year for the abortion industry and 2012 won't be any better.
"January opened with undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood employees appearing to aid and abet purported sex traffickers in their ongoing abuse of young girls and with grisly revelations from Kermit Gosnell’s 'house of horrors' abortion clinic in Philadelphia, where unlicensed, nonmedical personnel performed abortions in squalid conditions and where viable babies were delivered and then killed when their spinal cords were cut with scissors," Burke recounts.
"By the end of the year, several states had acted to eliminate or limit taxpayer funding for abortion providers including, most notably, Planned Parenthood, while others had taken strong action to ensure that women considering abortion were no longer subjected to the abhorrent conditions and practices so common at many of the nation’s abortion clinics."
The abortion industry seemed to be caught off-guard by the ferocity of the opposition it was now facing in statehouses across the nation where record numbers of pro-life bills were breezing through conservative legislatures and passing into law.
But instead of addressing their culpability, the abortion industry doubled down on its usual misleading rhetoric.
For instance, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards criticized lawmakers who, in her view, were not responding correctly to violations of federal and state law by pro-lifers, or to threats to women's health, but were instead '“escalating their anti-women rhetoric as they try to outdo each other in their attacks on Planned Parenthood and women’s health.”
"This naked attempt at misdirection is laughable, given the current state of the abortion industry in America," Burke writes.
There is ample evidence to demonstrate that it's the abortion industry that endangers women's health by focusing all their attention on avoiding meaningful regulation and oversight of clinics, procuring more abortions, and winning more taxpayer funding.
According to Burke, Planned Parenthood rakes in $1.34 million per day with more than 46 percent of its income coming directly out of taxpayer pockets.
But those stats are about to change.
"In 2011, in response to the abortion industry’s growing dependence on taxpayer dollars and taxpayers’ aversion to paying for or subsidizing abortions, two-thirds of the states considered measures to limit or eliminate the abortion industry’s taxpayer funding, with 19 states enacting one or more funding bans or limitations and an additional 15 states considering similar measures. In 2012, this trend is likely to continue, further depriving the abortion industry of its financial lifeline.
"Moreover, within the past 18 months, state officials in at least 14 states launched investigations into the abortion industry, resulting in criminal charges against a number of abortion providers, the closing of clinics, fines and other punitive action."
In addition, because the abortion industry cannot be trusted to police itself, at least 20 states considered stringent new regulations on the provision of abortions with Arkansas, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Utah adopting new protective standards. A number of states are already considering similar regulations in 2012, Burke reports.
This amount to what abortion industry insiders are calling "unprecedented attention" by lawmakers in 2011 to the abortion issue. Sixty-eight percent of new and relevant state laws placed restrictions on the abortion industry, representing “a striking increase” from 2010, when only 26 percent of newly enacted laws directly impacted the abortion industry.
"Clearly, the American people and many of their elected representatives are no longer buying the abortion industry’s disingenuous and self-serving claims that abortion is safe, the industry is the great protector of women’s health and mere access to abortion improves women’s lives.
"Jan. 22 marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a decision that has emboldened a renegade and parasitic abortion industry - an industry that millions of Americans and their elected representatives are now actively seeking to dismantle. As a result, 2012 seems destined to be another well-deserved bad year for the abortion industry."
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