I really, really wish that I had some good news to share about the Aurora Planned Parenthood case. But I don’t. Today, a judge denied PP’s request for a preliminary injunction that would allow them to open their doors while the “investigation” against them is underway.
After hearing two hours of arguments in a packed courtroom, Norgle denied the injunction request, saying Planned Parenthood had not met the legal requirements.
“There is a delay, but the delay itself at this point is not of constitutional magnitude” Norgle said. “That could change. By no means is this case over.”
Steve Trombley, president and CEO of Chicago area Planned Parenthood, said outside court that the agency will continue to press its original case.
“At this point it is safe to assume we don’t know when we’ll be able to open,” Trombley said. “We are confident that we did everything legally in this case. We are confident that we will be able to open the doors, it’s just a question of when.”
From Planned Parenthood’s attorney:
“We ask that we be treated like any other medical facility, an eye-care clinic, a foot-care clinic, a dermatology clinic, and be allowed to open for business,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the agency had shown that as long as the clinic is unable to open, harm is being done, which is the benchmark for getting a preliminary injunction.
“Women are not being treated for sexually transmitted diseases, women are not able to be screened for breast cancer,” Wilson said. “This is happening every single day that this ‘independent’ review goes on.”
Too true. Far, far too true.
In related Aurora news, Tracey from Unapologetically Female forwarded this lovely opinion piece on to me, out of obvious concern for the fact that I had gone the whole day without puking (kidding, Tracey!). Says the asshole whose name I’m not even going to bother learning:
On a radio interview this morning, an Aurora city councilman was upset that the abortion advocates would build an abortion clinic near a residential community when such clinics often bring dangerous conditions with them. After all, says the councilman, when they build these facilities they use bullet proof glass and try to make them bomb proof, so obviously they know that their facilities have the potential to bring danger to the community.
. . . The question remains: if an abortion clinic is so “needed” and wanted, why did they have to LIE to open one? Why the hiding behind a dummy company to get the city planning board to allow it to be built?
Worse, why is Planned Parenthood building a facility that they know will disrupt the community and might cause danger to the same people they claim to want to serve? And why chose a suburban location in a residential area when they know that their presence will disrupt the community?
Hey, generic men’s rights activist asshat, Planned Parenthood didn’t lie to anyone. They said that they were opening a medical center. They built a medical center. Just because you don’t like the kind of medical center it is doesn’t make it any less of a medical center. If the city doesn’t require their permit applicants to specify a particular practice (gynecology, podiatry, urology . . .), or if the city doesn’t properly examine permits before approving them, that’s the city of Aurora’s problem, not Planned Parenthood’s.
And secondly, are you serious? You’re honestly going to make an argument that Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be allowed because it “brings danger to the community,” when it’s assholes just like you who make working at Planned Parenthood such a dangerous experience. How exactly does Planned Parenthood cause danger on its own? Do you think that the nurses are going to go on a shooting spree in the neighborhood? Or that a zombie aborted embryo is going to come eat your brain? [Wait, don't answer that.] No, actually, the problem would be one of your buddies shooting the place up. If you don’t want Planned Parenthood to be a dangerous place, stop making it so damn dangerous.
I mean, fuck. I obviously cannot release any details, but I went into work at my Planned Parenthood affiliate on Tuesday to find out that there had been a security scare on Friday and that we were still on alert. How fun do you think that is? Planned Parenthood itself is in far more danger just by existing than anyone living near one of their health centers ever could be. They crazies aren’t going for you, they’re going for us. If we’re willing to take that risk– and hey, you probably hate us so much that you want us dead, anyway– shut the fuck up and let us take it.
But hey, I’m not an idiot. I know that I can’t expect any better from Men’s Daily News– which is precisely why I don’t even bother to read it, and only hear about anything that goes on there from emails and other blog posts. It pisses me off too much to know that these men even exist to venture over there on my own.
Anyway, please remember that Aurora and Planned Parenthood need your help. If you haven’t yet signed the petition and sent a ribbon in your name, please remember to do so (even non-U.S. readers can show their support in this way!). And if you are able, any and all donations are greatly appreciated and strongly needed.
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Maybe 5 years ago there was a debate on where a new DV court would be placed in Chicago. The best place was near public trans, BUT in a fairly nice part of town. The biz folks got upset and said that a DV court would bring “bad folks” to their area. When we pointed out that they had p0rn stores (grandfathered in) in ther nice touristy area, they were unfazed. The DV court is in a nice new building…not that close to public trans.
same shit, different day.
We’ve had a half dozen young girls (in Alabama) die from botched abortions this year alone. And that was just what made the news. Since there have been exactly TWO abortion workers killed since 1973, it would seem the danger to the community DOES come from the “clinic”, not those evil protesters.
Hal, do you want to cite some sources on that? I am severely tempted to assume these are the back alley, non-regulated type of abortion that does kill women – hence why we need to keep it safe, medically sound, and legal. Either that or point out that people also die after heart surgery, so that’s clearly dangerous and should be outlawed, but I’ll supress my ire until you post links to news sources.
Yeah, strange how google news archives couldn’t find shit. You’d think that at least one of those “deaths” would have made the news, huh?
Oh come on Cara, he said they made the news! Operation Rescue’s website counts as ‘news’, right? Right.
Oops, sorry, my snark switch was left on. My bad.
I’ve got another idea. Naral has claimed there were ten thousand young women dying a year from “back alley” abortions before 1973. Yet a thorough search by the Associated Press could come up with only a couple. How about you show me any kind of evidence of that claim?
P.S. Naral also wants RU486 to be an OTC “medication”. There have been seven confirmed deaths from doctor prescribed “morning after” pills (which can be used up to the ninth week of pregnancy, so “morning after” is a joke). How many young women will die when it can be purchased at a convenient store?
Actually, NARAL claims up to 5,000 annual deaths from illegal abortion prior to Roe v. Wade.
Also, you’re an idiot. RU-486 is not even the same drug as emergency contraception. EC is the “morning after pill,” dipshit, which is just a higher dosage of normal hormonal birth control pills, while RU-486 actually causes abortions. It’s like calling Advil and Morphine the same thing, and so you really do deserve similar mocking to someone who would make that type of claim– not only for your extreme ignorance, but for going around parading that ignorance in front of a fucking reproductive rights activist as though it’s fact.
But oh yeah, I’m totally going to believe your other ludicrous claims when you can’t even get the world’s most basic fact straight. Hm, notice how you come here, make a bogus claim, we ask you for a source and you give us none. You come back and make another bogus claim, and I refute it with facts. And what’s that? Online news archives from the years before 1973 are not comprehensive? Do you mean . . . not as comprehensive as the 2007 archives??? No way! Funny how you’re the one to claim that the “deaths” made the “news” and yet you fail to produce a single news article.
BANNED.
Bickety bam.
Can’t argue with them, then ban them. Typical liberal coward.
Uh, Teresa, where were you? Notice how I was the only one who formed an actual argument here?
I don’t ban people because I disagree with them. I ban them when they a. become insulting or b. start telling lies. I know, not tolerating people who spread ignorance about women’s health issues is COWARDLY. Right.
Thanks for this: “If you don’t want Planned Parenthood to be a dangerous place, stop making it so damn dangerous.” I was out at the Aurora site the other day and said something similar (though not as sharp or concise) to an anti-abortion picketer, and she couldn’t really answer me.
An update ….
Planned Parenthood is calling for a rally this coming Tuesday, 9/25, at the Aurora City Council. Please visit ppaurora.blogspot.com
for all the particulars. Everyone who can should support them in this — remember when the antis tried to shut down clinics and we stood out and opposed them and stood our ground?
We need to raise an enormous hue and cry over this.
The idea that we will prevail by simply sitting quietly and letting this be worked out in the courts, hoping not to “make waves” or “offend anyone” is a dangerous illusion that will only lead to us losing more and more ground. Let’s not be naïve about the anti-abortion movement: they are not going to stop at banning abortion, which would be terrible enough. They have a nightmare agenda for women and society: a return to openly patriarchal values, and a return to the traditional order of things where a woman’s role is to be under the thumb of her husband and the producer of his children, where women are openly the property of men to be controlled by their husbands.
Would abortion have ever been legalized without the women’s movement in the first place, without women and men marching and fighting in the streets to demand that women get this basic right? Women’s right to abortion is under attack from the highest levels of the land – where President Bush is an open supporter of the anti-abortion movement – and in the courts: just this year, the Supreme Court banned a needed late-term abortion procedure, and laws in several states allow pharmacists to refuse women their birth control. This battle over women’s lives and futures needs to get taken up broadly throughout society, in all kinds of venues and arenas. We have to go on the political, ideological and practical offensive against the whole package of biblical-literalist and traditional values And, as part of this, we need to be out in the streets – if the only ones out in the streets were the anti-abortion activists, it would be intolerable.
We can’t be held back from protest by the fear of “offending” someone: first of all, it is the anti-abortion forces, sweeping in and denying women their basic rights, who are the ones being offensive! We cannot cede the moral battle to anti-abortion lunatics. They do not have the moral high ground. Women are not incubators, fetuses are not babies, and abortion is not murder. There is nothing immoral about ending a pregnancy – but the program of denying women the right to abortion (and the basic health care of birth control, STD testing and treatment) is in service of an ugly morality indeed: one that cuts women off from acting in the larger society, contributing all they can to that, and living full lives as productive human beings in every sphere and independent from men. This is the traditional biblical morality that says wives must “submit yourself unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church” (Ephesians 5:22-23. These people want to return society to a place where THAT standard sets the law of the land. That would be a horror for women and a terrible thing for society as a whole.
A clinic offering fully legal and much-needed services should not have to encounter controversy or opposition – but the controversy is here. And we need to step up and defend this most basic right of women. We need to stand up and defend this clinic, we need to be out in the streets demanding it be allowed to open now, and we need to win this struggle – the stakes are very, very high.
Thank you for the info, Linda– I will probably highlight it in a post later on today!
Wait… was Hal thwarting me with the concept that the fact that illegal abortion kills women is a lie? So, is he okay with abortion as long as it’s in a back alley or something?
If you’re going to try to keep the moniker of ‘prolife’, hon, you might not want to make your cheerful acceptance of women’s deaths so blatant.
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