‘Transgendered Leftist Activist’ — Ted Cruz Speaks

Ted Cruz says there's no evidence the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, who killed three people including a police officer, was in any way influenced by the right-wing anti-choice movement's aggressive public statements against Planned Parenthood, but instead is a deranged murderer plain and simple, despite his reported remarks about "baby parts" after his arrest.  Cruz says the murder could just as well have been committed by a "transgendered leftist activist."

There are two problems with Cruz's assertion. The first is that this sort of murderous outrage has been targeted at Planned Parenthood for decades, with at least one murderer caught, convicted and executed for killing a doctor at an abortion clinic in Pensacola, FL in 2003. (I saw that man interviewed on Nightline by Ted Koppel; he was one scary mofo.) And this latest murder, of Officer Garrett Swasey, allegedly by Robert Lewis Dear of North Carolina, was one of no fewer than seven murders of employees of Planned Parenthood or other clinics engaging in a wholly legal medical procedure at a lawfully operated clinic.

The second problem is that Ted Cruz himself, who may not actually be a "transgendered leftist activist" (and I most certainly don't mean to imply that he is; e.g., he's surely not a leftist), is... well, you and I know what he is, though I'm sure we don't know the half of it:

Regular readers (if I still have any) know I oppose the death penalty under all circumstances, but it is difficult for me to find any sympathy for Robert Dear if he committed a crime that deprived us of Officer Garrett Swasey, doing his sworn duty, quite possibly despite his personal opinions on Planned Parenthood... we'll never know. (You have no idea how difficult it can be for a clinic at which abortions are performed to hire an off-duty officer to protect it; back in 1996, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas forbade his deputies to take off-duty work guarding Planned Parenthood clinics or other "controversial" locations.)

As President Obama put it, simply and directly: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

---

(My usual disclaimer: more than two decades ago at the beginning of my career as an IT contractor, I did a series of contracts creating apps for the local Planned Parenthood. I am proud of that work, and what I saw of the day-to-day functioning of the clinic convinced me that the women of Texas, young, old or indigent, are in capable hands indeed for their reproductive health care. Shut down Planned Parenthood and you will, with certainty, kill an unknown number of women.)

Ben Carson Calls For Abortion Ban — No Matter What

I heard about it on TV, one of the broadcast national news, but you can read about it on another NYT blog stealing another noncommercial blog's name:

Ben Carson Calls for Ban on Abortion in All Circumstances

The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Sunday that he believed that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape and incest, comparing the procedure with slavery.

“I would not be in favor of killing a baby because the baby came about in that way,” Mr. Carson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” citing “the many stories of people who have led very useful lives who were the result of rape or incest.”

Mr. Carson, who has not been shy about using slavery and Nazi metaphors, held up what he said was a historic parallel with abortion.

“During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave,” said Mr. Carson, a former brain surgeon. “Anything that they chose to do. And, you know, what if the abolitionist had said, you know, ‘I don’t believe in slavery. I think it’s wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.’ Where would we be?”

...

This statement proves just one thing... no matter how quiet-spoken he is,

Ben Carson is a RAVING, FULL-BLOWN BATSHIT CRAZY, WOMEN-HATING RIGHT-WING NUT CASE.

That is all. Actually, that is almost all...

'Oh, wait, abortion is the worst thing...'

The current second-ranking GOP candidate for president, himself a physician, advocates a policy that will KILL MILLIONS OF WOMEN. While the fetuses those women are carrying... in many cases, given how early most abortions are performed, fetuses at most a few cells in size... are in no meaningful sense human, THE WOMEN CARRYING THEM ARE INDISPUTABLY HUMAN BEINGS.

"It's a moral issue," a Catholic coworker once sententiously told me. "Yes, it is," I replied to her, "and I have contemplated the issue every bit as much as you have, and have concluded that IT IS IMMORAL TO KILL PREGNANT WOMEN WHEN THEIR LIVES CAN BE SAVED SO STRAIGHTFORWARDLY."

If you are female, you must have a deep-seated self-hatred if you vote for Ben Carson.

Now... that is all.

The GOP's [Not So] Great War On Women: The Party's Ongoing Attempt To Kill Planned Parenthood

There's no doubt about it: if you're an American citizen of the female persuasion, you do not want to live your life in the dystopian version of American society the Republicans are building.

And Republicans themselves, especially the ones who wrongly self-classify as "conservative" (they're actually radical as hell), feel freer every day to speak their misogyny right out in public. Any lie about women that serves their petty political purposes, they say it, often in front of a session of Congress. Any "document" that reflects their partisan position on a women's issue, however antiscientific that doc's content, they dredge it up in front of a House committee, post it all over the Web and talk endlessly about it on Fox, ABC, CNN, etc., who sometimes seem almost to be unofficial branch offices of the GOP.

It's really ugly out there these days, and I don't see Republican behavior improving until after the GOPers succeed in stealing the 2016 presidential election. If they don't succeed in stealing the White House, count on the anti-women rhetoric continuing until they steal an election, or go to ground trying (yeah, I know; wishful thinking on my part).

Planned Parenthood, as you know if you're reading this blog, is American women's essential health care resource: without its existence, its funding, its efforts, many American poor women, or even women of ordinary means, or adolescent or senescent women, or women deep in underserved rural areas, or college students, would never receive even the most basic of reproductive health care, and could and do die of the lack.

GOP leadership (what's left of it) is laying about itself with a broadsword, and it is women who get the worst of it. At its most malevolent, the GOP aims the blade at Planned Parenthood. For the record, and contrary to what you may have heard from Repub's like that chronic liar Carly Fiorina, about 1½ to 2 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion-related. (UPDATE: NPR, which I've heard stands for "Nice Polite Republicans," uses the figure 3 percent. I'm not going to dispute over a 1 percent difference: by law, none of it is federal tax money anyway. But don't believe for one nanosecond those hostile women-hating antiabortion fanatics who would tell you it's 15 percent; that's a figure they made up out of thin air.)

---

Four women reporters at TPM... TPM regulars Sara Jerde, Caitlin Cruz and Caitlin MacNeal, along with the brilliant and seemingly omnipresent Amanda Marcotte... sample recent GOP output from what many of us appropriately label the GOP War on Women. You may want to read their articles listed below, some of which include videos... I thought I understood how bad GOP hatred of women is, how withering is the blatant public Republican assault pointed at American women, but these reporters' research has convinced me: whatever I imagined, the reality is even worse:

• Sara Jerde: GOP Chair Repeatedly Interrupts Planned Parenthood Head At Hearing
• Sara Jerde: WATCH: Did A GOP Rep Just Wink At Planned Parenthood's President?
• Sara Jerde: Planned Parenthood Head Shuts Down GOP Chair Over Abortion Chart
• Amanda Marcotte: The GOP's Great Mammogram Farce Of 2015
• Caitlin Cruz: Wilmore Debunks Bogus Chart At Planned Parenthood Hearings
• Caitlin MacNeal: GOP Chair Defends Using Chart From Anti-Abortion Group At Hearing

The "GOP chair" referred to is Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) (rut?), and I've often wanted to ask him: "Chaffetz, does your mother know what you do to women, not at night, but right out in broad... television lighting?" Then again, I'm sure I'd be a happier person if I never met that asshole...

Fiorina Lies, Or At Best, Is Grievously Mistaken About Planned Parenthood Videos... Nah. ‘Lies’

Via Sara Jerde at TPM yesterday, we have this:

Fiorina Defends Planned Parenthood Comment: I've Seen The Footage!

... which is damned peculiar, since...

Her campaign and the organization that released the "sting" videos can't point to the video that shows what Fiorina described.

What's ugly? It's not her face...
It's her baldfaced lies

Ah, well; all's fair in love, war, and kicking Planned Parenthood every time it offers necessary health care services to poor women. And lying certainly counts as part of that "all," not just for Fiorina but for all the GOPer presidential candidates.

TPM reader The_Mask points us in comments to a NYT article,

Planned Parenthood Videos Were Altered, Analysis Finds,

and a FactCheck.org article,

Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video,

both of which do a lot to put the lie to what Fiorina and other Republicans are claiming.

It is a testament to the political extremism of the GOP: the actions of congressional Repubs (especially John Boehner and his uncontrollable tea-bagging crew) in reinforcing this blatant hit piece are yet more evidence that Planned Parenthood continues to exist because it provides basic health care services to women whom the government underserves or, more often, does not serve at all. And no, I'm not talking about abortion: the GOP clearly wants to prevent these women, mostly indigent women or women of color, from receiving basic exams for cancer and other diseases potentially fatal to them, and that same GOP is willing, nay, eager to destroy the organization that makes those services available. Write it large in your personal notepad:

The GOP kills poor women.

If accomplished by other means, these heinous acts would be called murder, or even gendercide. Does America want to be listed among the countries where that unconscionable crime is committed? The GOP is taking us there in a hurry!

Jane Fonda Aims At Reviving Fight For ERA, Demands Answers From Candidates

Please read her post at CNN. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the ERA Coalition. It's been 40+ long years since the last great battle for the constitutional amendment that would... do what? require unisex bathrooms? force all women to be trained as lesbians? Actually, the wording is a lot simpler than what some opponents (damned liars) will tell you:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

To paraphrase Fonda, who could take issue with that, apart from some politicians, mostly men, who genuinely wish to see women's subjugation in the political arena? Answer: you'd be surprised, in a nominally "free country," how much resistance there was back in the 1970s, and while many of those opponents have died off, their extremist views run rampant in today's America. I'll let Fonda tell you about it; she's in the middle of the battle herself.

Monday Miscellany On (Oops! Sorry!) Wednesday

• Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel
  

  (Richard Silverstein at Shadowproof)

• Workers To Face Biosurveillance From Employers
  

  (Dan Wright at Shadowproof)

• A Texas Conservative Openly Calls For Violence Against LGBT People
  

  (Kossacks for Marriage Equality)

• The GOP’s deeply flawed field
  

  (Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation at WaPo)

• There was that time JEB! forced single mothers to post their sexual history in the newspaper...
  

  (SemDem at Kos)

• Krugman: Why All The Republican Candidates Are Attacking Social Security
  

  (Dartagnan at Kos refers to...)

• Republicans Against Retirement
  

  (Krugman at NYT)

Friday Catch-Up

Too much celebration of Stella's 64^th left me in no condition to blog for a couple of days. Here's a list of... uh... stuff... to clear the desktop of things that accumulated:

• Appeals Court OKs Throwing Out Strict North Dakota Anti-Abortion Law
• Alito: Gay Marriage Ruling Could Allow Judges To End Minimum Wage Laws
• Mitch McConnell: 'Gender Card' Not Enough To Get Hillary Clinton To White House
• Planned Parenthood: Secret Video Part Of Years-Long Harassment Campaign
• The Constitutional Roadblock to Efforts to Fix Federal Elections
• Republican House and Senate Introduce Bills Allowing Companies To Fire Single, Pregnant Women

Supreme Court May Hear Texas Abortion Clinics' Appeal Of Lower Court Ruling That Would Have Immediately Closed More Than Half Of Texas's 19 Clinics

... or This?

This...

AP via ABC 13 Houston has the basics. I try hard not to quote AP if I can avoid doing so, so please go read it in situ. Or is it in shit‑ooh??

Ten A Dozen Essential Ideas For Fixing The American Economy — Robert Reich

Robert Reich has completed, not his scheduled ten, but an even dozen videos succinctly expressing the great ideas essential to making the American economy more robust for all its participants and transforming American society into one more committed to equality of treatment of all its members under the law.

The 12 Videos appear (in reverse order) in the right-hand column of Reich's blog, and each video runs about 2-3 minutes. I can't think of a better way for an adult or adolescent American to spend about a half hour than in watching these videos. (In addition to his insight, Reich has a great hand as a cartoonist, which he exercises along with voiceovers on the current topic. You'll have fun learning some excellently framed talking points!)

Rand Paul: Rights And Liberties For Me... But Not For Thee, Not If You Are Female

Are any women out there thinking Rand Paul might be the presidential candidate for them, based on his emphasis of the often-mentioned "right to be left alone" by the government? If so, you'd better read what Zoë Carpenter at The Nation has to say:

“The right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights,” Kentucky senator and presidential aspirant Rand Paul said over the weekend in San Francisco. He was there to sell himself to the young tech elite as a civil-liberties crusader; the only candidate willing to take an uncompromising stand against government surveillance. He cares so deeply about privacy that he’s planning to filibuster the renewal of parts of the Patriot Act.

"What every woman really needs is
one of my fingers." - Sen. Rand Paul

But the leader of “the leave-me-the-hell-alone coalition” is simultaneously, albeit more quietly, arguing that women should have little privacy in their healthcare decisions. “The government does have some role in our lives,” Paul said at a summit organized by the anti-choice Susan B Anthony List in April, by which he meant making abortion illegal. Paul describes himself as “100 percent pro-life.” Along with all of the other Republican presidential candidates he supports a bill that resurfaced this week in the House that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

...

Oh, yes: Rights for him; no rights for you. Women of reproductive age, take note...

A Hell Of A ‘Compromise’ To Get Loretta Lynch Confirmed — UPDATED

Emily Crockett, Federal Policy Reporter at RH Reality Check, explains what Turtle McConnell has done:

Senators announced a compromise Tuesday that would move two long-stalled legislative items: a human trafficking bill that has been embroiled in a fight over abortion restrictions, and the confirmation of Loretta Lynch to be the nation’s first Black female attorney general.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had refused to bring Lynch’s confirmation up for a vote until the Senate passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA), despite Lynch’s undisputed qualifications and strong record on prosecuting human traffickers. The tactic enraged advocates and Black leaders, some of whom staged a hunger strike in protest.

McConnell said Tuesday that once the JVTA is passed, the Senate will move on to Lynch “in the next day or so.”

...

Lynch

Apart from the raw unmitigated arrogance Sen. McConnell displayed in his throw-away remark about "the next day or so," and (IMHO) the very real possibility he will get the bill he wants and then fuck the removal of the anti‑abortion language, the bad news here is that it establishes Turtle's ability to blackmail the entire US Senate... hardly any senator opposes the essence of the bill, or Ms. Lynch's confirmation... to get whatever he goddamned well wants. I am glad Lynch will be confirmed, but I am far from confident we will not live to regret this "compromise."

UPDATE: an agreement has been reached. The bill has passed; Ms. Lynch will be voted on... on Tuesday. It seems goddamned Turtle is in no hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain... what else is new?

How Six (6) Catholics On SCOTUS Can Be Bad For American Women's Rights

Pieklo

Kennedy

Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior legal analyst at RH Reality Check, explains in considerable detail how SCOTUS, in particular Justice Anthony Kennedy, has undertaken a proactive anti-abortion-rights stand in Gonzales v. Carhart. If you ever thought the Supreme Court was independent of politics and uninfluenced by the religion of its current members, particularly its old men, this story should disabuse you of that notion. Young American women, please take note: Kennedy is no moderate but rather your sworn adversary, and believe me, he won't let you forget it.

My State Rep, A Republican, Says Women Will Die If Texas Lege Renders Cancer Screening Unavailable By Forcing Planned Parenthood Clinics To Close

Sarah Davis
(R-TX134)

It is hardly news that the Texas GOP has made repeated attempts to impose the harshest strictures on women's health clinics that offer abortion in Texas, such as Planned Parenthood, no matter what other essential medical services those clinics offer women. It is news (from Tara Culp‑Ressler at Think Progress, March 10) that a Republican legislator has come out in opposition to her party's attempts to kill women by denying them high-quality cancer screening in an attempt to deny them constitutionally protected access to abortion.

That legislator, State Rep. Sarah Davis (R-TX134), represents my district.

I have long since taken a solemn vow not to vote for any Republican unless Abraham Lincoln rises from the grave and runs in a district in which I am registered to vote. At least Lege elections are in even-numbered years, so I have some time to think about this race.

The problem, of course, is not what Rep. Davis would do independently; rather, it's what she could be pressured into doing along with her party. And the R-dominated Texas Lege, under a new, presumably ideologically driven Repub governor, could make laws that could literally kill women by the thousands, and GOPers in the Lege have not been shy about attempting those very laws.

I have often wished for an active pro-choice or at least pro-women's-rights movement within the GOP. All that proves is that one should be careful what s/he wishes for!

The New Anti-Choice Claim In State Legislatures: ‘Abortion Isn't Healthcare’

"Keep abortion legal.
No exceptions.
No apologies."

Since the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), a woman's right to choose abortion in the first trimester of her pregnancy has been recognized as a constitutionally protected right. This explicit recognition by the nation's highest court has left abortion opponents to chip away at the edges of abortion: limiting its availability; imposing ridiculous building codes on abortion clinics and qualification restrictions on abortion doctors that do not apply to other kinds of clinics and doctors; and now, the most absurd of all: claiming that "abortion isn't healthcare" and therefore is not legally protected in the way most medical options are.

"Abortion isn't healthcare?" Try to tell that to the woman whose life has been saved by an abortion. The claim is, on its face, false.

That doesn't stop the nut-jobs from passing their nut-job laws in crazy state legislatures such as the one in Texas. Quoting Robin Marty at TPM in an article about the claim the crazies make repeatedly in North Carolina,

...

The logic behind North Carolina abortion clinics’ new regulations echo [National Right to Life's David] Andrusko, too. In 2013, anti-abortion legislators repeatedly inserted language that would allow the state board of health to write new medical standards for abortion clinics—and only abortion clinics—into multiple bills, finally getting it passed after inserting it into a proposal on motorcycle safety. Bill supporters said the new regulations would be written just to increase patient safety and not with an intention to shutter most of the abortion clinics in the state, as other similar regulation bills had done in other states that year.

...

"While the governor is trying to treat abortion like any other medical procedure, on one level that's a good thing, but he's really dismissing the important part," one abortion opponent told ABC 13 News.

That “important part” the governor apparently dismissed? That abortion is not supposed to be viewed as health care.

Even the allowable “exceptions” for obtaining termination when a ban is in place shows that every line of an abortion law is written with this express idea in mind. There are no mental health exceptions because an abortion can never be needed for mental health reasons. There is no medical exception because an abortion is never medically necessary. You can have one only if you will have “irreversible harm” or permanent damage to a “bodily function” because an abortion is never required to protect a pregnant person’s health.

Abortion is never healthcare. Once you recognize this assertion as the root of every piece of legislation, every bill suddenly makes complete sense.

Many anti-choice zealots see their opposition to all abortion as a matter of religion. It's impossible to argue with radical religious conservatives (and in this case I have to include most Catholics in that broad category): religion is itself not a matter for logic; any ordinary sane process of reasoning applied to problem-solving is readily tossed out the window in service of establishing the believer's "fact" for the greater good of his or her faith. Hence "abortion is not healthcare" ... a manifestly absurd claim... is accepted unquestioningly by the religious fanatics in conservative state legislatures for the explicit purpose of prohibiting abortion even in cases where abortion is indisputably healthcare, such as saving the pregnant woman's life.

O tempora, o mores!

Another Attempt At An Unconstitutional Abortion Ban, This One In Ohio

Robin Marty at TPM has the particulars. At least three similar bans in other states have already been ruled unconstitutional, so this one is unlikely to survive a costly court challenge. Why do they do it? Hey, 2016 is already on the radar; the evil woman-hating assholes have to appeal to the base...

DC Circuit: ACA Contraceptive Mandate Does Not Impose Burden On Religious Groups

Via Richard Lyon at Kos, we get the word from CBS-DC:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a challenge to Obamacare that would have enabled non-profit religious organizations to avoid government-approved contraception programs.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the challenged regulations do not impose a substantial burden on religious groups.

...

Now it only remains for the Supremes to reverse... [/sigh]

Separate And Emphatically Unequal: Court Rulings Using An ‘Undue Burden’ Test, With Clinics In An Adjacent State, To Restrict Access To Abortion

Please read author/activist Robin Marty's article at TPM, "Is One Key Anti-Abortion Attack Beginning To Fall To Pieces?" (There's no need for me to repeat its extensive content, and it's too complex to summarize effectively.) You'll learn about the latest attempts to legislate de jure obstructions to abortions, access to which women are constitutionally guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, and possible changes in federal court responses to various "no undue burden" assertions used in recent decades by courts seeking grounds on which to vindicate various new state anti-abortion laws.

This is surely a risky business... but so is the whole process since Roe more than 40 years ago. Women's constitutional rights absolutely should not depend upon the votes of one or two federal district courts determined by a woman's state of residence, or (more recently) upon the religious affiliation of two-thirds (6 of 9) of the Justices of the US Supreme Court. But they do. The more such state laws are passed... the more federal district court rulings that validate those laws... the more women of reproductive age have a very real chance if living into a second era in which their constitutional right to control their own reproductive status is willfully destroyed by one or more of five aged men on SCOTUS. Ladies, keep your eyes open... and be prepared to take your arguments to the streets if nothing else works. In a just world, America should be faced with a simple choice: an uncompromising protection of the rights of ALL its citizens irrespective of gender, or a coordinated response to restrictions which brings America's male-dominant society to its knees. A baldfaced compromise of the civil liberties of half the American public is wholly unacceptable.

I will restate my fundamental principle on the matter: Every child a wanted child; every birth a healthy birth; every decision regarding a woman's reproductive status and health a decision affirming wholeheartedly the woman's own position. No exceptions!

In 24 Years, Texas GOP Governor Candidates Have Not Learned One Simple Fact: Rape Is No Joke

Republicans talk ceaselessly about "freedom 'n' democracy," but for women, under Republican rule, there is no freedom, not even freedom from violent personal assault:

Here's Planned Parenthood's assessment (NOTE: link goes to Facebook):

In 1990, Clayton Williams "joked" about rape while campaigning against Ann Richards. You might think that a few decades would be enough to teach politicians not to make light of rape, but that sadly isn’t so. This November there’s a collection of men running for state office who think that politicians know better than women – even victims of rape – about what decisions are best for them. This is why we organize. This is why we fight to #StopGregAbbott

Twenty-four years after Clayton Williams's infamous gaffe, Republicans are more determined than ever to wrest total control of women's bodies away from those women, right down to the most personal decisions a woman can make. A woman who votes for Greg Abbott is voting for her own enslavement. Save your personal rights instead: vote for Wendy Davis.

Watch Bill Moyers As He Interviews Linda Greenhouse And Dahlia Lithwick On Hobby Lobby And The Supreme Court...

... but put your credit card and your bullhorn out of reach first, because you may find yourself thinking you need to make a trip to DC to engage in a bit of civil disobedience... no, just watch the video to inform your own condemnation of this decision, its consequences even in the short term, and the whole bloody Catholic Supreme Court as currently configured by GeeDubya Bush and Barry Obama. I can pretty much guarantee you that if you are a reader of this site, this interview will make you angry!

Six Catholic Supreme Court Justices Walk Into Sit Above A Bar...

... and assure that cases involving women's reproductive health issues virtually never receive a fair hearing. In this case, Harris v. Quinn, the Court struck down a Massachusetts law that placed an invisible boundary 35 feet from the entrance to any abortion clinic, a boundary within which anti-abortion protesters may not go in pursuit of talking women out of obtaining a legal abortion. The Court claimed that the protesters' First Amendment free speech rights were violated by this boundary.

I have traversed the grounds of a Planned Parenthood location many times while working on an IT contract for them, and I can tell you from direct observation that what those protesters do is by no means confined to gentle logical persuasion. They physically obstruct the woman's path to the clinic with their bodies. They shove bloody fetus pictures in her face. They shout at the top of their lungs at her. If the clinic has escorts (most do these days), they actually assault the escorts by falling on them to create a breach in the line protecting the clinic.

There is no way on earth that what they do is limited to "speech." The claim that it is, is a baldfaced lie... a lie now endorsed by the overwhelmingly Catholic-heavy Supreme Court.

Sooner or later, a woman seeking an abortion will carry a firearm to the clinic for self-protection. Sooner or later, a living, breathing adult human being, one whose humanity is not in dispute by any parties to this debate, will get hurt. And if they are hurt while waving a bloody-fetus poster in a woman's face, I will not feel any sympathy for them. Abortion is an established legal... nay, constitutional... right in America: no woman should be required to tolerate threats to her person to exercise that right.