3.27.2011

Today In Conservative Hypocrisy, Part Whatever

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) are hotbeds of anti-choice lying and manipulation aimed at doing whatever they feel is necessary to coerce women into carrying their pregnancies to term.  Pro-choicers have been saying this for quite some time, but recently - finally - lawmakers on various local levels have begun to pay attention, and a few laws have been passed - mostly on a city or county level - that compel CPCs to post a sign admitting they don't have medical staff on-site, aren't a real clinic, do not provide or refer for abortion or contraception services, or some combination or all of these things. 

Well, anti-choicers are nothing if not flaming hypocrites, so despite their hard-on for regulating every last nuance of actual clinics' functioning, they have this tendency to throw whiny hissy fits about having to be upfront about what they do and don't do.  I mean, I get it.  If your whole business model is based on the premise of lying to your clients, and someone starts forcing you to be honest, it would kind of cramp your style. 

But in reading a press release (via) about the challenge to NYC's CPC-signage law, this phrase jumped out at me:
...[O]ur suit contends that, at a minimum, the ordinance "unconstitutionally compels Plaintiffs to speak messages that they have not chosen for themselves, with which they do not agree, and that distract from and detract from the messages they have chosen to speak."
I...I just...*head explodes*. 

Does anyone else remember all those laws forcing counselors at abortion clinics to read a script set down by lawmakers, compelling them to tell women things like "terminating the pregnancy ends the life of a unique, separate, living human being" and that abortion increases their risk of breast cancer and depression, neither of which is true?  (Fun fact: in Maine and Wisconsin [253.10(3)(c)1.a.], the first fact of which women must be informed according to the script set down in law is "You're pregnant."  You learn all kinds of interesting, and by interesting I mean headdesk-inducing, things when you actually read the statutes.)

Why is it that it's okay, and commendable, and "pro-life" to require abortion clinics to pass on biased and scientifically-inaccurate information to women under the guise of "counseling" and "[mis]informed consent", but these fuckers howl bloody fucking murder when lawmakers want to require them to be honest and upfront about what services they do and don't offer or refer for?  If biased and flat-out wrong information about abortion is not being compelled "to speak messages that they have not chosen for themselves, with which they do not agree, and that distract from and detract from the messages they have chosen to speak", then fuck, I don't know what is.

But I suppose that's conservatives for you.  Now introducing the "today in conservative hypocrisy" tag!  Sadly, I have the feeling it'll get plenty of use.

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