December 12, 2008
Stop Forced Abortions Alliance’s Initiative Will Help Women Pushed Into Unwanted Abortions
Group Announces Initiative and Reacts
to Secretary of State's Ballot Language
St. Louis, MO (December 12, 2007) – Missouri voters may be given a chance to vote in November on legislation which may reduce the risk of women being coerced into unwanted abortions, according to the Stop Forced Abortions Alliance, which submitted the petition initiative to the Secretary of State last month.
According to www.StopForcedAbortions.org, the petition, titled the Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortions Act, has been approved for circulation by the Secretary of State’s office.
Paula Talley, one of the group’s organizers, said, “This is a very pro-woman law. If it had been in place in 1980, I would have been spared the years of grief and depression which followed my own unwanted abortion,” said Talley.
Talley says she was pressured into an abortion which went against her moral beliefs by her employer. She also says she was at greater risk of more severe emotional reactions to the abortion because of her prior history of sexual abuse and depression.
“The abortion counselor never asked if I was being pressured nor did she inquire about my psychological history,” said Talley. “If she had, she should have known that in my case abortion was contraindicated. This law would help to prevent other women from being victims of negligent pre-abortion screening.”
According to the Stop Forced Abortions website, women like Talley are vulnerable to injury because “Most abortion providers have abandoned any effort to screen for coercion and other risks in order to reduce costs and maximize profits.”
In a 22 page report titled Forced Abortion in America the group describes cases of women pressured, coerced, and violently abused into submitting to unwanted abortions. It also includes citations to studies of coerced abortions, including one which found that 64 percent of women having abortion report feeling pressured by others.
Ten days before the Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office published the Stop Forced Abortions' initiative, Planned Parenthood and NARAL of Missouri issued news releases describing the referendum as a "ban" on most abortions. Yesterday, the Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who has been an advocate for unregulated abortions, issued ballot language which echoed the description of the initiative as "banning abortions."
In the group’s official reaction to Carnahan’s ballot language, Stop Forced Abortion’s website raises the concern that Carnahan not only leaked the initiative language to Planned Parenthood but appears to have “conspired with Missouri's largest abortion provider to construct a ballot title which falsely characterize the initiative as a ‘ban,’ when in fact it does not ban, forbid, or criminalize anything.”
“The Stop Forced Abortions Alliance is seeking to prevent coerced and unsafe abortions, an objective which should be shared by all people of good will,” the statement reads. “It achieves this end simply by correcting a loophole in the law that currently denies women right to redress for negligent screening. The only people who can oppose this legislation are those who care less about protecting women than they do about protecting the abortion industry’s profits.”
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