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Give The Gift Of Abortion This Christmas

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Health.
Dec 2nd, 2008 | Comments

What do you give the woman who has everything? How about this:

Here’s an original holiday gift idea to help the person who may have everything, including a little something they don’t really want. A new way to mark the festive yearend celebration of life — a gift certificate for an abortion.

This year for the first time, Planned Parenthood of Indiana is offering holiday gift certificates for that certain someone in your life who may want a breast exam, a pap smear or perhaps not want another life in their life.

Calling them an “unusual yet practical gift this holiday season,” the organization is selling gift certificates in $25 denominations redeemable at any of the group’s 35 statewide locations for their services, including health screenings, birth control and abortion services.

A Planned Parenthood website page notes that a standard women’s health exam costs $58 while abortions in the first trimester can run from $350 to $900.

There’s even an online page to order the certificates if you know someone in Indiana who desires such services.

The L.A. Times’ prolific blogger Andrew Malcolm has a lot more so read the whole thing.

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AustinRoth

It doesn't matter what your position on abortion is, there is only one word for this - crass.

Jim_Satterfield

Actually, the first sentence makes me not want to read the whole thing. The gift certificates are for absolutely any service or product provided, not specifically for abortion. So given that the overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood services are for disease screening or birth control there is nothing crass about it. It's being blown completely out of proportion.

Jim_Satterfield

OK, I caved and went and read the whole thing. My first impression was right. It was a piece of junk journalism. Why did you think it was worth reading, Joe?

Silhouette

WTF?

DLS

These left-wing groups really are itching to be provocative. Too bad the economy comes first...

What's next, ACLU pre-paid bail bonds?

roro80

So, while this is on the same "excitement" level as a grocery store gift certificate or a pair of running socks, it's a little silly that it's being called a "death certificate" or that people are particularly up in arms about this. Planned Parenthood also provides health care to women who want carry pregnancies to term, give councelling and encouragment to young expectant mothers whose families/boyfriends want them to have an abortion (but who don't want one themselves), and give birth control to women who don't want to get pregnant -- the very best way to reduce the abortion rate.

archangel

I think that there are articles floating about that are free-form old style tabloid. I know it is a tender subject, abortion, and ought be discussed and told about from many serious angles especially from those who have undergone/endured/chosen this. May I just offer an article I wrote last week at the National Catholic Reporter, called "Children She Got That She Did Not Get: After Abortion." It is a serious article instead of a crass one. I know that many do not agree with my premises on the matter, but I hope this article sheds light into very darkened corners, especially regarding those who continue to suffer aftermath. Thank you for listening. The article is here at the top of the page: http://ncrcafe.org/blog/6987/

dr.e

GreenDreams

Pretty silly, Joe. But I do hope to see a followup in February on whether A SINGLE gift-certificate abortion has occurred. I doubt it.

Jim_Satterfield

I'm sorry, dr. e, but we will never agree on this issue. You assume a great deal. A huge assumption about when life begins and an even larger one about those who decide to go that route.

archangel

I know Jim_Satterfield. I work with those who've made hard choices; they are the least heard of all in this issue that has been parsed by media since forever as having only two sides. It doesnt. It has thousands of sides. More. Millions. Ever. I hope it is time, in our time now, for all those stories to begin to be told. All the points of view by those who've not been heard from. (Worldwide, not just us, you, me, them, there.) Or who tried to speak and were shouted down. Many of us, for instance, felt, what can I call it so that it will not be scorned? the leap of life in our bodies, the very night/ day conceiving occured. Odd seeming, I know. But perhaps only because such matters do not reach the evening news nor the NYT above the fold. Certainly, a discussion for another time and place. A long one.

Thank you for taking the time to read tho JS. I look forward to your points of view on many things all these, what? 42 years we've known one another at TMV now... Written word on the glass screen doesnt necessarily carry smiling. That came with a smile.

dr.e

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