The war on women and our civil liberties has started from Ashcroft.

[Cleita]

Tonight as I helped my husband go to bed I was listening to the 11 pm news on our CBS outlet from LA. It was announced that Ashcroft has subpeoned medical record from family planning clinics in the County to assess if the abortions performed there were medically necessary. This is after the passage of the ban on partial abortion.

I'm sorry but I am doing this on the fly. I don't have time to research this as I was listening to this while I was doing other necessary things. These local stations sometimes get things wrong, but if this is true, this is awful.

Did the partial abortion ban state that all abortions had to be medically necessary? What are we going to do? What is next, sterilization for genetically inferior people so they don't breed and don't try to get abortions?

I can't stay up and follow up on this until morning, but if this is true, MY GOD??

[Stephanie]

1. No, you're right. This is happening. I will look for links.

But I heard it on the radio. So far the medical providers are refusing.

[Kool Kitty]

2. Yes, unfortunately, this is true.

It started earlier this week. While everyone was paying attention to Mr. Gibson's film and the gay marriages, this is one of the things that slipped through, unnoticed and uncovered by the media whores. Every time some fluff-type story gets gobs of attention (I am NOT referring to the "gay marriage" amendment here-that has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention), a la the Janet Jackson breast exposure, you have to look real hard to see what should be the really big story. This is one of them.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. Here's one link

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/2882450/detail.html

[Hekate]

4. Planned Parenthood affiliates are his target

There are 10 articles on the yahoo link below. Planned Parenthood says it's not going to turn the records over, but this means quite a battle.

I hope he rots in hell.

Hekate

http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=&p=ashcroft%2Bsubpoena%2Bplanned+parenthood

Reuters - Feb 27 11:29 AM
The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed Planned
Parenthood for the confidential medical records of
hundreds of women as part of its defense against
challenges to a federal law that bans a type of
late-term abortion, the family planning organization
said on Thursday.

[izzie]

8. I am glad they are going to fight it.

Bush and Co seem to hate women. Is this for the right wing nuts? What happened to that big meeting they had in DC. The keepers or some such thing. Are they still with up?

[mrdmk]

5. Apparently it is true

Ashcroft will go down in history losing a senate seat to a dead and then becoming the worst Attorney General. The Attorney General is suppose to protect citizens rights, not take them away. Mr. Bush Jr. maybe held for criminal acts, but being stupid like Ashcroft is not against the law, at lest not yet!

[strategery blunder]

7. Worse than Palmer?

Don't get me wrong, Asscroft is about as evil as evil gets. But is he worse than AG Palmer, who used the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) to pioneer and set precedent for what Asscroft is doing now, and worse?

We are not quite yet to the point, thank God, where the government can break into my residence because I am, say, a member of DU. Palmer would have had absolutely no qualms about this, especially if HE had access to all the databases that exist now.

However, Asscroft easily gets second worst AG, and it is a close call as to whether or not he gets first place.

[Octafish]

9. Hi, chair094! Yes, the government can break into your home.

Under the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, and they don't have to tell you about it.

Welcome to Oceania. And a heart welcome to DU, chair094!

From he Electonic Privacy Information Center:

Authority to Conduct Secret Searches ("Sneak and Peek")

Section 213 eliminates the prior requirement that law enforcement provide a person subject to a search warrant with contemporaneous notice of the search. The new "secret search" provision applies where the court "finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse effect." Although the Administration's "Field Guidance on New Authorities Enacted in the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Legislation" states that the new authority "is primarily designed to authorize delayed notice of searches," the amendment permits seizure of any tangible property or communications where the court finds "reasonable necessity" for this seizure. The law requires that notice be given within a "reasonable period," which can be extended by the court for "good cause." "Reasonable period" is undefined, and the Administration's Field Guidance advises that this is a "flexible standard."

This significant change in the law applies to all government searches for material that "constitutes evidence of a criminal offense in violation of the laws of the United States" and is not limited to investigations of terrorist activity. Prior law authorized delayed notification of a search only under a very small number of circumstances (such as surreptitious electronic surveillance). The expansion of this extraordinary authority to all searches constitutes a radical departure from Fourth Amendment standards and could result in routine surreptitious entries by law enforcement agents.

http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/

[mrdmk]

29. For everybody who is not aware of AG Palmer

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/felkins10.html

There is also a side story of a J. Edgar Hoover and his beginnings.

<snip>
Palmer's outstanding achievements in documenting, locating and harassing tens of thousands of "suspects", in a time long before computers and electronic databases were invented, were made possible by the talent and efforts of his number one assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, of which more discussion will follow. An online essay, "America responds to Terrorism: The Palmer 'Red Raids' summarizes these accomplishments:
<snip>

One thing needs to be noted at this time. President Wilson was a southern Democrat at the time. This was the conservative party at the time. Not only did Wilson sign in the Espionage Act (1917), Sedition Act (1918), and the Alien Act (1918) to get into World War I (the war to end all wars) but also segregated Washington D.C. Wilson was hell bent on taking away people's rights at the time and had the people to do it.

[strategery blunder]

31. Thanks for the link

I should have provided one myself.

Sorry to anyone I confused

[Q]

33. Actually...they CAN 'break into' your home...

...for literally any reason. Haven't you read the Patriot Act(s)? They can spy on you and search your home without your knowledge under the auspices of 'fighting terrorism'.

[seabeyond]

34. they can arrest you

for saying the word fu8k and charge you with terrorism then all the rights are out the door

[Ysabel]

6. PPFA President letter to clients...

A Letter to Planned Parenthood Clients from PPFA President Gloria Feldt:

February 27, 2004

A Letter to Planned Parenthood Clients from PPFA President Gloria Feldt:

I am writing to personally assure you that Planned Parenthood protects the confidentiality of your medical records.

You may have seen media reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a sweeping invasion of medical privacy, is trying to obtain medical records from Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is taking every step within the law to resist this move. These subpoenas are part of a Planned Parenthood lawsuit to stop a federal criminal abortion ban signed by President Bush in November 2003. Our case, PPFA v. Ashcroft, was filed on behalf of Planned Parenthood affiliates and our physicians, staff and patients.

----------

Rest of letter at link:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/pr/040227_medical_privacy.html

----------------------

Another link - get involved - PPFA action center:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/takeaction/

[Cleita]

10. Thanks to everyone who posted information and links when

I couldn't. We can't let this issue die. If this administration thinks they can blatantly intrude on our lives like this, what is next? If the Attorney General succeeds in gaining this records, will these women be arrested?

Will women who have had what he deems as unnecessary abortions go to jail. Will they be tried? Or, will they just disappear somewhere without benefit of a trial like the Jews in Nazi Germany or the communists in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet?

[Hekate]

13. I think the hazard for now is publication of records

A right to life group has moved into Kansas to target one of the last three docs in the US who can and will do late-term abortions by the intact extraction method. They picket his house and clinic, they similarly harass the employees. But worse than that is the stalking of everyone involved, and photos and names of patients being held up on posters. Los Angeles Times had a front page article on it a couple of weeks ago. The local judge determined that these stalkers are within their First Amendment rights.

It seems pretty obvious that Ashcroft is not only retaliating against PP for daring to sue his department, but is trolling for any actionable materials. Given the current climate and the current regime, I would also expect some leakage of personally damaging information a la Valerie Plame.

Good historical point about the Palmer Raids in the other post. We are fast approaching that type of thing, as the mechanisms have been put in place by the Patriot Act et al. Ashcroft is of that same puritanical mold that wants to decide for everyone else what is and is not decent, moral, obscene, or patriotic... and Ashcroft also relishes the role of Grand Inquisitor and Lord High Punisher.

The anti-choice bunch have all but won the entire war. Abortion is unavailable now in 90% of US counties, as providers have been publicly shamed and put in fear of their lives. But that's not good enough: it's clear that anti-choice groups will not stop until legal abortion is utterly crushed and then off the books. And women again start dying of sepsis. Hallelujah.

Hekate

[pippin]

11. This needs to be a major 2004 election issue

so let's see how the candidates line up on this one.

[Cleita]

12. Maybe we ought to start bringing this to the forefront with our

candidates and our elected representatives in Congress. WTF are they doing letting our country go to hell?

[KoKo]

14. It's bad what they are doing, but young women, don't realize the rights

they will lose that were fought for by all the women before them.

My impression is, that they don't really care. They are all fundies or believe so much in "the pill" that they are invinceable.

It's surprising to me how quiet our young women are about this. It's almost like they need to lose their rights before they know what they've lost.

I'm sorry to be harsh, here. I'm sure there are many young women who care, but where are they? It seems to be only those who fought for all this who are upset, alarmed, or angry?

What do you all think? Maybe you live in a different part of the US than I, and have observed something different. I'm in a fundie part...but even fundies have accidents, are raped, or have medical problems where choices need to be made and it shouldn't be left up to the Asscroft/DeLay/Frist types to make these choices.

I see little interest.....where I am....:-(

[Cleita]

17. That's the trouble with young women. They think reproductive

rights were always theirs but it's untrue. When their right to even have contraceptives available to them becomes difficult, like it was in the fifties, they may sit up and notice.

Back then diaphragms or condoms were the contraceptives of choice. Then only married women could get a diaphram unless once had a discreet and understanding doctor. Usually one just got a lecture about being a tramp. Condoms had to be purchased from a pharmacist which means one had to ask for them and they wouldn't sell to anyone under eighteen unless they were married.

When the pill came along the same rules that you have to be married also made prescriptions difficult to come by but by that time the counter revolution had come along and doctors dropped the moral police act. So it became easier to get contraceptives.

So, as you can see many girls got pregnant who didn't want to and many were either forced into teenage marriages or had to get unsafe backstreet abortions. I see this move by the moral majority to be a foot in the door so they can push all the way in and reverse any choices women have about their fertility.

It seems that all these rights are being taken away from us by a group of bigoted, misogynist white men who claim Jesus told them so.

[KoKo]

19. Try telling them that though. They don't want to hear it! They think

it's Granny stuff.....like those stories of "I walked through snowstorms just to get an education" kind of stuff.

I'm telling you they don't care....they look on it as a "lecture."

I know the history of this Cleita.....but they DON'T WANT to know.....

:shrug:

[Cleita]

21. I guess they will have to learn the hard way.

I don't have to worry myself and maybe you don't either. It's a fat chance in Hell I will get pregnant unless I become Sara and it's a miracle.

[Malva Zebrina]

18. Somehow they have been influenced by the talking fetus

and fail to realize that their guilt influenced by this propaganda is not the guilt of all women.

These younger women do not understand or appreciate what -previous generations of women have done for them as far as revealing what rights women do have. They simply cannot understand what it was like before Roe vs Wade and have been influenced by the guilt of what others usually men, have heaped upon them and forcing pregnancy upon them. No one should ever be forced into a pregnancy by any means whatsoever.

Women are their own worst enemies. They buy it lock stock and barrel that their own bodies are "vessels" of others to demand they conform to what others usually males and females who wish to subjugate themselves to males, demand of them.

They buy it.

They buy it that they are NOT the rulers of their own lives and bodies and they buy it that they are "sinful" in some way for supporting themselves and their family because they understand that another child that will not be loved at all was aborted when it was only a few cells. They are told that these numbers of cells is a "potential" human being and they buy that logic and they submit to the entire suffering, emotionally and physically to something they do not want in the first place. They child will not be born as a wanted child. But there they are, under the thumb of others who tell them what to do with their own bodies.

[MaggieSwanson]

15. Use this link to send a message...

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?ItemId=16441

...and I agree with you whole-heartedly. This is a disgrace.

(updated url)

[Ilsa]

16. If they continue to win at this,

there will be consequences.

For one thing, women will start having earlier DNA fetal testing, usually by CVS, or chorionic villus sampling. This is relatively safe for the baby if an experienced doctor is doing the procedure. It can be done at about 10-12 weeks, but carries a miscarriage rate of 1/200 to 1/100 per CDC. They might actually be responsible for more miscarriages of healthy fetuses than if they had let mothers carry their pregnancies longer before testing, such as with amniocentesis. But let's face it: not every pregnant woman has access to more advanced obstetric medical procedures.

But not everything will be detected by CVS. There are other fetal anomalies which can occur from gestation, and they may be devastating. I wonder if Asscraft is going to take care of those babies that are forced to be brought to full term if they are born anencephaly, etc, because the mother wasn't at risk to go full term.

Politicians and lawyers have no business determining these health matters. Women need to rebell against these monsters.

[Cleita]

20. You know what this is only the beginning. They don't want

women to have any say in how many children they will have. They will do what they have to do to push first abstinence for unmarried women and secondly married women having as many children as god sends them.

The reason Catholics, Mormons and other sects promote having lots of children is because this is an easy way of growing their membershhip and getting kids when they are really young to indoctrinate them.

If women don't fight this, every means of planning their families will disappear one by one. It's also a way of keeping women subordinate and this is what these RW men want.

[lumpy]

35. It is well past time also

that the medical professionals take care. They have already lost much control of their medical practices to government interference and i.e. insurance companies determining what procedures are covered or necessary. Doctors should be fighting for their right to provide the best medical care available. Too many discouraged doctors have left the profession because of red tape and legal interference binding their abilities to practice in the best interest of their patients.

[Ilsa]

37. As one woman interviewed on NBC News last night revealed,

her OB has stopped providing certain procedures, even if deemed necessary, because of all of the potential legal wrangling that could be brought against him. Doctors are tired of spending more time defending their practices versus practicing medicine.

The reich-wingers don't even have to ban them all, just make them harder to defend, and before long most docs will stop providing care. We're back to women having to go to the edges of the country (NY or CA) to get access to medical care.

Geez, before long we'll be living The Handmaid's Tale.

(edited for grammar and spelling)

[seabeyond]

22. rush right to not have medical records

looked at. yet go after these womans medical records and the woman who was possibly raped by bryant. seeing an oddity here?

[Cleita]

23. They are going after the medical records to check whether

abortions performed were medically necessary. If a doctor thought they were medically necessary and performed the procedure, who is going to decide that they weren't? Also, what authority does the partial abortion ban have to go back to records when they were legal? This is way too Big Brother for me.

[janx]

28. Hey--take a look at what happened to the husk of Terri Schiavo

in Florida.

Jebby and the government are making the medical decisions there.

[Thucydides]

24. This is not new, here is a great article from Jan. 2001

WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) -- In nearly three decades in politics, John Ashcroft has struggled to balance his public life against his private faith--the need, as he once wrote, "to invite God's presence into whatever I'm doing, including politics."

If Ashcroft is confirmed as attorney general, nowhere will that balancing act be more critical than in the debate over abortion, and that is sparking widespread worry and warnings from women's groups in the nation.

The son of a Pentecostal minister and a champion of the religious right, Ashcroft believes that abortion is wrong in nearly all cases. Indeed, his dozens of votes and proclamations seeking to severely restrict abortion--first as attorney general and governor of Missouri, then as a U.S. senator--have been a hallmark of his career, his record shows.

Ashcroft, 58, makes no excuses for his passionate views on abortion, decrying the politics of moderation.<snip Read on, theres more>>>>

http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/10/latimes.ashcroft/

[Cleita]

25. Pretty much says what he stands for. Too bad he doesn't have

the same Christian fervor about born children, like in Iraq.

[Thucydides]

27. I believe the term Fundy and Hypocrite are often .....

interchangeable. So sad but true!

[shanti]

26. doesn't he look like a man who hates women?

he does to me....is that freak married?

[Sugarbleus]

30. There are certain men, Asscroft for one, that I can vividly

imagine wearing one of those early Salem/Pilgrim type hates while chasing and killing so-called witches.!! Ken Star was another one. I wrote to Ashcroft once about how wicked his beliefs are; I wonder if he ever saw it?????????????????? lol

Misogyny knows no bounds.

[Ms. Clio]

32. But Oxycontin Rush's medical records are off-limits

Go figure:wtf:

[lumpy]

36. Good point meluseth

The religious so-called 'right' have insidiously taken over and quite methodically are eroding the advances made in social areas in this country. The religious zealot, Ashcroft has been granted power to affect our very personal lives and has wasted no time in inflicting us with his brand of religiosity.

[Cleita]

38. What a good point!

If dittomouth's medical records are private, so should everyone else's be. Which one of you congressional pink tutu Democrats is going to grow a spine and point that out to Mr. Ashcroft?