Calling Planned Parenthood

Time for a better Super Bowl ad controvery over abortion rights. Thank you Dr. Mengele, I mean, Gosnell. My print column is up.

UPDATE: Christina Flowers weighs in strongly.

UPDATE II: Will Saletan, a moderate pro-choicer himself, quotes the view of his more radical brothers and sisters.

Last month, two leading reproductive rights activists, Steph Herold and Susan Yanow, published an essay rejecting the concept of time limits.

They write:

Women have no obligation to make a decision as soon as they possibly can. The only obligation women have is to take the time they need to make the decision that is right for them. Don't we believe that women are moral decision makers, and carefully consider their options when faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Don't we reject the anti-choice rhetoric that women make the decision to have an abortion callously? The pro-choice movement takes a step backward when we judge that a woman has taken too long to make what may be a life-changing decision. Shouldn't we want women to take the time they need to make the best decision, regardless of where they are in the pregnancy?

Yes, Yes. Take all the time you need Ms. Lady. That thing making your belly swell is of no more moral consequence than a kumquat.

Unless, of course, YOU decide that it is. Then you can have a BABY.

The power the pro-choice absolutist gives women over their unborn children is akin to that of a master over a slave.

Writes Saletan:

It's one thing to preach these ideas in the lefty blogosphere. It's quite another to see them in practice. That's where Kermit Gosnell, the doctor at the center of the Philadelphia scandal, comes in... Throwing Gosnell in jail won't solve the problem. The women who came to him at 26, 28, or 30 weeks will show up somewhere else. And if you won't say no to them, you will have to say yes.

That is the logic of the pro-choice absolutist.

And so they have not only lost the moral argument they have lost the political argument. Most state now restrict abortion, allowing few if any after 24 weeks. More and more Americans support even greater restrictions than that.

Meanwhile, as Flowers reminds, in New York City some 40 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion.

Pro-choice advocates have always claimed they wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare." Well, it is certainly not rare. It's not nearly as safe for the mother as the pro-choice left and government bureaucrats would like the public to think. (Thank you, Dr. Gosnell.) And it is never safe for its living human target.

As for legal, it is becoming less so, as more and more people come to recognize the violence it directs at the most innocent of human beings.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin lets loose on the "climate of death" enabled by the abortion industry.

Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s existence — it’s at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It’s the logical, bloodcurdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.

UPDATE III/Correction: In my column I wrote that the Family Research Council produced the Tebow Super Bowl ad. It was the group Focus on the Family. Obviously, I regret the error.