My God. I am absolutely speechless. That was beautiful.

The tragically unbelievable phrase the last of his kind is going to be haunting my mind for the rest of the day.

Such an amazing article.

It’s more than obvious that the anti-choice movement basically clings to this because it’s the only thing in their repertoire that appears to the larger society to be moral. Violently fighting against all signs of peace because of the antichrist, violently hating women, gays, minorities for daring to exist, openly engaging in child abuse metaphorically and literally, and of course all the murders.

This is their excuse to the idiots in the media who don’t understand or want to understand that women are worthwhile people. And it’s even more evil than the rest of it. I really hope that we get a resurgence, that the Tiller thing has woken up the larger liberal community to the necessity of abortions and providing them. In a country our size, there should never be a point wherein only one doctor is left.

That’s freaking awesome.

Well I’m glad that 14-year-old didn’t get an abortion.  She clearly did not want an abortion, and choice works both ways, which is what wingnuts fail to understand.  Her mother trying to force her to have an abortion is no more pro-choice than people who want to force women to give birth.  Dr. Hern did the right thing.

catgirl,
Exactly, and it more than underscores the lie Bill O’Reilly spread about Dr. Tiller that he’d give anyone an abortion for five grand. Not quite. Not close.

Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion? Before.

Maybe it’s just that they don’t come with brains.

Why is the article referring to him as an “abortionist”? IMO that’s loaded right-wing language. He is a doctor who performs abortions.

These women have the Mark Sanford syndrome: When I have sex, it’s beautiful and holy, but when you do it, it’s tawdry and you should be punished.

I think the article is trying to reclaim the term.  Dunno if it works. But you’d certainly say “the neurosurgeon” or “the cardiologist” or “the OB” or “the pediatrician” or perhaps any other specialty than this one.

You know what else is chilling? If there are any other doctors out there who are thinking about taking on this work and specializing in late-term abortions (or even performing them at all) no one should mention their names. Because they don’t have federal marshals protecting them.

The thing is, Paul, that doctors who perform abortions do a variety of other things related to reproductive health as well. Neurosurgeons do neurosurgery; cardiologists specialize in hearts; and so forth. And I don’t think the supposed reclamation works, not when Richardson refers to Hern relentlessly through the article as “the abortionist,” rather than by his name.

Also, Richardson used the term “partial-birth abortion” with Hern, without putting it into sneer quotes. Anyone who knows anything about abortion knows that it’s not a medical term, but a term of right-wing framing.

I wasn’t crazy about the use of the term abortionist (or the second-person framing, WTF was that?) or a few other things in the article.

But in Dr. Hern’s case, all he does is abortions. He has a very specialized practice that is overwhelmed with demand because he’s the only one doing what he does. He isn’t an ob/gyn who does some abortions and some family planning and some ob work.

Taking the article overall, the writer made a number of stylistic choices I found annoying, but we’re better off with the article out there than without it.

It’s kind of frightening when the US begins to resemble Iran.

kind of frightening?? I’d say it’s DAMN TERRIFYING.

wow, I just can’t believe that this sort of measure would pass any half-way sane school board.

sorry, wrong thread. :(

Taking the article overall, the writer made a number of stylistic choices I found annoying, but we’re better off with the article out there than without it.

Chingona, I agree. I think sometimes the article works because of the author’s writing, sometimes in spite of it.

Can we all just quietly urge the Feds to keep the US Marshalls with Dr. Hern and all of the other doctors they’ve been following since Dr. Tiller’s murder? Everyone knows they’re there so keeping them there should be priority #1 in insuring that women receive safe abortions. These men and women should receive this protection until their lives naturally end. Unfortunately, the armed men and women of the US Marshalls are the only way we can keep our legal rights.

When I have sex, it’s beautiful and holy, but when you do it, it’s tawdry and you should be punished.

The Right hates the flesh. The messy, messy flesh. There’s a reason the ones who aren’t christofascists are libertardians with a transhumanist/download me into a computer terminal technoreligious bent (Glenn Reynolds comes to mind).

The article is also wrong in that he’s actually not the last late term abortion doctor.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/08/19/why-dr-leroy-carhart-wont-stop-doing-abortions/

Hey! I hate the flesh, too, but figure it’s MY choice to do so and won’t force anyone else to do that! I’m pretty much a transhumanist and want to be downloaded to a cloud of self-replicating nanites, but don’t want to take away anyone’s civil rights!

Mr. Richardson’s attempt at a profile piece on Dr. Hern was an embarrassment; it’s a pity Esquire couldn’t find a professional reporter to do the job.

Oh, and in case there was any doubt, please allow this deliveryist, who’s friends with some bladder suspensionists, root canalists, and appendectomyist, to name but a few, you know, specialists, to point out that Mr. Richardson refuses to refer to Dr. Hern as “doctor” throughout the article, yet he has no problem doing so when it comes to Dr. Tiller.

When it comes to terms like “partial birth” abortion or “abortionist” I think it’s best to keep in mind that medicine and allegedly (muahahaha) trying to reclaim fantasy, propaganda terms are a dangerous mix. Better to be as precise and reaity-based as possible when it comes to healthcare, even if said healthcare only involves women of reproductive age.

I thought Richardson’s writing was just right, and here’s why:

He wrote it in the anti-choicer’s language, almost from their point of view (asking contrary questions, insisting on terms like “mom” and “abortionist”), and the rightness of Dr. Hern’s position and life utterly overcame that. It, frankly, shone right through, and unless Richardson is just an idiot, I honestly think that’s what he was going for.

And he makes it clear that he’s trying to reclaim “abortionist”, even if for some it falls short.

BTW, my take on Richardson’s angle is informed by his history of writing strongly anti-right-wing-wacko pieces.

Google Ad: “Looking for unplanned pregnancy? See our online guides.”

Re: the use of the term “abortionist”: the author was both trying to reclaim the term, and using it repeatedly to underscore the point that Dr. Hern and his staff have to deal with the reality of their work…which obviously can be far from pleasant…and that for them, this is not something they couch in euphemism or else as an abstract or academic debate.  The pointed mention that the term “abortion” is used in the name of the clinic itself (as well as a picture underscoring that reality), and the foray into Dr. Hern’s writing on the subject and the coping mechanisms he and his staff use was no accident.  The reclamation effort may or may not have been successful (you have far too high a standard for writing excellence if you expect a single article in Esquire to singlehandedly rehabilitate the term) but the choice to underscore the term abortionist was conscious and not solely related to making the term “acceptable” to anyone.

It’s more than obvious that the anti-choice movement basically clings to this because it’s the only thing in their repertoire that appears to the larger society to be moral. Violently fighting against all signs of peace because of the antichrist, violently hating women, gays, minorities for daring to exist, openly engaging in child abuse metaphorically and literally, and of course all the murders.

Again, I have to repeat the need for a different perspective to our typical liberal group-think here.  Although I disagree with them, I feel it is vital for us here to seriously consider a question:

If you truly and honestly considered a fetus to be a baby and a human being, as many of these people seem to do, wouldn’t the comparison between abortion and the Holocaust be reasonable? there are around 800,000 abortions in the US each year - what would you do to protest or prevent the murder of, say, 800,000 Jews or blacks every year?

Now, you can react in anger to me saying that - but all I’m doing is asking you to consider a different perspective to the one we share.  You can claim that they have bad faith and that this is part of an anti-sex/anti-woman agenda, and to some extent you’d be right - but many of them actually believe this, and their bad faith in a related area doesn’t preclude an honestly held belief in this.  Or you can react as if I’m arguing their side - I’m not; I’m asking that we consider our own reaction in an analogous situation.

These people say they consider fetuses to be as human beings.  Many of them are no doubt sincere to a large extent in this.  When we’re condemning their actions, shouldn’t we also consider what we’d do in the face of policies leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of people each year, and interpret their actions in that light?

Auguste,

I’m not familiar with Mr. Richardson’s other work. Anyway, here’s the reason he gives for using the term:

By the way, [Dr. Hern] hates the word abortionist. Though it is a simple descriptive term like “podiatrist”.... All the same, it is the right word, an accurate word, and our discomfort with it is but a measure of how poisoned the language of abortion has become.

He asserts that “abortionist” is the right word, an accurate, medical term (so no need to feel uncomfortable using it and Viva la Reclamation!). And the evidence he offers in support of his assertion? The fact that he uses the term repeatedly and exclusively for Dr. Hern (and his family). Right.

You (and by that I mean, me) get that Mr. Richardson is just special in his attempt to reclaim the term, yet, overwhelmed by his importance, all you (again, meaning me) can do is to blurt out a rushed question: What’s the point of reclaiming a propaganda term?

Felix Culpa,

Since when is the term Ob/Gyn an euphemism? And why would you need to use a propaganda term to underscore the reality of medical procedures/patient care?

To use an example, abortion and delivery are both procedures performed by Ob/Gyns. If abortion is such a special procedure and, in order to underscore the reality of performing abortions, the unpleasant aspect of the work, the need for coping mechanisms, we need a special term for Ob/Gyns who perform abortions, what term do we need for Ob/Gyns who perform deliveries? Because if you think performing abortions is special, unpleasant, etc., let me assure you that losing a patient in the prime of her life on the delivery table is not only unpleasant, it also requires the mother of all coping mechanisms.

To what end, PIOTOR?  Are you saying we shouldn’t call these assholes out on their hypocrisy because it’s possible that they might be sorta sincere?  What good will that do anyone?

They don’t believe abortion is murder, or they’d favor severe criminal punishment for women who get abortions.  They don’t.  They’re full of shit.  Pretending that abortion is actually worse than the holocaust does nothing to help us, or them.  It’s just stupid.

re: phoenician in the time of romans

like what jrod said, either you believe abortion is murder or it isn’t.  abortion doctors have never put a gun to these women’s heads, they went and got abortions out of their own volition—that’s premeditated murder according to the pro-life logic.

i notice that the women who got abortions and then regretted it and are now calling abortion murder have not volunteered themselves for hard prison time.  i wonder why that is?  i mean, if i planned to kill someone, and actually did it, do you think the jury would accept my sincere apologies and spare me from going to prison? 

i once asked a pro-life young woman about this.  she claimed that getting an abortion was just like shooting someone.  i was like, ok.  so you agree that if i shot someone, i deserve jail time, no matter how sorry i am.  she agreed.  then i asked her if she believed that the girl who got the abortion should serve 20 to life for getting an abortion—after all, she did plan to kill her baby, and she actually went through with it.  well, she had to think it through.  in the end, she had no answer, except to say that it was wrong and that she’ll never have one.  how illuminating. 

would any of these prolifers sentence a woman to prison, or send her to the chair for getting an abortion? 

i’ll say it, even if it’s not pc—pro-lifers have no guts.  they are too chickenshit to lay any kind of personal responsibility on the woman who gets the abortion because it means that a) any political support they have from conservative women will disappear and b) they know many conservative female supporters would be in prison if they actually followed through on their belief that abortion truly is murder.

PiaToR, if they were sincere about reducing abortion, they would be in favor of measures that have been demonstrated to be effective in doing so, like increased sex education and better access to contraceptives.

Working towards a society that would help expectant mothers who feel the need to abort because of economic factors by, I dunno, universal healthcare, and subsidies for women with children for the first few years of the childs’ life, would also address the issue and be praiseworthy from any rational POV.

That would be sincere, but I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting for the anti-choice forces to espouse any of the measures I’ve mentioned, wouldn’t be prudent…..............

To what end, PIOTOR?  Are you saying we shouldn’t call these assholes out on their hypocrisy because it’s possible that they might be sorta sincere?  What good will that do anyone?

I’m troubled by the fact that we automatically dismiss their concern as “bad faith” without considering our responses to analogous situations.  It smacks way too much of a justification for not engaging with their position honestly.

Consider the way wingnuts discuss Iraqis or the Palestinians. 

And then go look at the responses to my comment which assumed the anti-abortionists had monolithic views (“if they were sincere about reducing abortion, they would be in favor of measures that have been demonstrated to be effective in doing so, like increased sex education and better access to contraceptives”) or reduced a possibly complicated view down to a simple point in order to accuse them of hypocrisy (“They don’t believe abortion is murder, or they’d favor severe criminal punishment for women who get abortions”).

So, look, what we have is a situation where questioning provokes anger, and where people don’t address the original question (“shouldn’t we also consider what we’d do in the face of policies leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of people each year, and interpret their actions in that light?”).

Don’t those strike you as the symptoms of cognitive dissonance?

“catgirl, agreed. I read this off another blog when it first came out, and dear lord, either that girl didn’t want an abortion”

I don’t know that there’s really an “either” there.  If she’s sitting there saying he should be killed before giving her an abortion, it seems pretty fucking clear that, for whatever reason, she doesn’t want the abortion.  Sending her home was both an understandable reaction to a deeply hostile patient and the absolute right thing to do.

I’ll say this too, PiaToR:

I don’t know about you and your circle in New Zealand, or specifically whether right-wing Christianists are an exotic, unusual type in your world, but many of us US Pandagonians, including yours truly, have been raised in this world-view you want us to “consider.” We know it inside and out. We reject it on its lack of merits, and despite often considerable social cost.

I will confess this much—I spent a long time, even after I was convinced that legal abortion was a necessity, haunted by the fear that I was indeed turning a blind eye to a massive Holocaust, out of the expedience of wanting to get along with women, both because I wanted them to think well of me personally and because they were vital allies in progressive causes.

And I was hardly alone in this. One individual I knew at Caltech, who was quite the leftist radical himself (he later ran as the Green candidate for the Governor of Texas) was aghast at the sheer number of abortions every year.

And by the time he articulated this, in the late ‘80s, I was just as uncomfortable with his discomfort at these legions of women having abortions as I was with that phenomenon itself.

But over time—after a series of relationships with women who had had abortions, and thinking about it, and some clarity provided right here at Pandagon—I realized that it just does not make sense to pretend that a woman choosing to terminate her pregnancy is the same thing as murdering a human being. As others have pointed out, no one on either side of this fight acts as though they consistently believe that, and I think the reason for this is that we all know deep down it isn’t true.

Nowadays I think that a woman decides whether or not to try to create a new human life herself, and if she does, we have a baby (whether it survives pregnancy or not) and if she doesn’t—we don’t.

Believe me, if you think the so-called “pro-lifers’” feelings are hurt when we dismiss their absurd premise out of hand, we’ve got nothing on how hurtful and dismissive they can be of reasoning like mine. Nevertheless, facing the withering contempt of a solid bloc of my family with whom I have been living this past year and a half (which by the way is ending soon) I continue to believe as I do, because I have come to this conclusion having been deeply exposed to the other side’s reasoning, such as it is, and yet having life experience and reason on reality demonstrate the truths I now hold to.

And then go look at the responses to my comment which assumed the anti-abortionists had monolithic views

Find anti-abortionists who advocate for more sex education and increased access to contraception(Roman Catholics anti-abortionists who believe in the latter, let alone the former, are very rare), and you’d have a point.

Piator, there are a couple of reasons why I don’t give anti-abortion folks the benefit of the doubt (there are exceptions to all of the below, but they are relatively rare):

- they are opposed to all methods except forced birth to reduce abortions. Contraception, comprehensive sex ed, social support systems for mothers, etc. If I were faced with thousands of people dying (NOTE: I don’t actually think this is an appropriate analogy, I’m just engaging the hypothetical presented), I would be campaigning hard for every policy option to help prevent this.

- being anti-abortion also means being anti-welfare services, anti-universal health care, and pro- death penalty. If it were actually about saving lives, these positions would be contradictory.

- anti-abortion organizations spread lies and misinformation at alarming rates. On a recent visit to middle America, I acquired some literature from an anti-abortion booth. They averaged 2 outright lies and 2 grossly misleading statements per tiny pamphlet page. And those were just the inaccuracies that I could recognize without checking on any of their other numbers and statistics (example of a grossly misleading statement: ‘it has been argued that X’, where X is false, with no follow-up mentioning that X is false. Technically true, but misleading). When presented with a tragedy, my first instinct would not be to lie my head off about what was going on.

If someone is an honest, consistent, anti-abortion person, who campaigns for all policy initiatives to reduce unwanted pregnancies, then I would consider them a reasonable candidate for talking about autonomy and forced use of the mother’s organs. We could have a discussion about if/why abortion is different from refusing to donate one’s kidney to one’s dying child. But I’ve met exactly one such person IRL, and a whole host of other dishonest frauds. So when folks start shrieking about ‘OMG it’s like the Holocaust’, my first instinct is that they’re just saying it to excuse violent, misogynistic, controlling behavior. Because they sure don’t act like that’s how they view abortion.

It’s hardly bad faith PIATOR. I’m basing it on knowing them personally and intimately, on deep and penetrative studies on the movement, and signs of internal consistency.

When I made that claim, I wasn’t actually trying to be hyperbolic, I was actually pointing out the main contention between rapture ready christianists and so-called “polite society”, which is that they’re kinda crazy. They literally believe or find it easier to maintain a half-belief in a loose set of tribal politics outlined in the book “Left Behind”. The chief idea in that book is that all peace and anyone who claims to be for peace or brotherhood or any form of empathic aid of others is instantly suspect to be the antichrist. Moreover, that nothing really truly bad to the godliest of godly can happen unless we’re becoming less godly by cheering on the antichrist by supporting said peace etc…

As such, to defeat the greatest of all evils, they need to posit themselves essentially against the betterment of the human race and quite often firmly for its active worsening or downright destruction (see them on global warming, environmentalism). The problem is that this makes them look like sadistic jackasses. While that would be fine for the victim complex, it would make them politically near-worthless as even the MSM wouldn’t give that much airtime and deference to people actively against the existence of everyone else.

But with abortion, they have the illusion of having a moral position, because they can frame themselves as protecting something innocent (even though fetuses are in no way equivalent to live children). As such. regardless of whether or not they believe it, they must be seen as believing it because otherwise what excuse do they have for having sociopathic politics. Frank Schaeffer in “Crazy for God” demonstrates that the pro-life leaders realized it and Fred Clark of slacktivist has had a number of great articles out about how unlikely it could be for the footsoldiers to really buy the crazy wholeheartedly rather than using it as a shortcut to feeling superior to others.

And furthermore, I refuse to give them credence because of what others have pointed out earlier. If you really believed that fetuses were equivalent to children, if that was an earnest statement and the real core of response, then there should be ways one would respond. One would definitely support locking up patients for one, one would be more willing to save stem cells or fetuses than actual born children in a theoretical fire, and most critically one would care at least as much about born, living children than you do about those slut-murdered ones and one would be pushing through every form of aid and education to prevent the further spread of the affliction. One also would be expected to be against state executions or at least wars as women and children are usually the most affected by them.

But instead, they fight against welfare, family planning, contraceptive, sex education, condom usage, AIDS prevention, peace efforts, foreign aid, etc….

None of it is consistent with their purported beliefs. In any fashion. If we assume their headspace and enter into it, there is nothing there that connects, there is no there there.

I’m fully willing to give my opponents the benefit of the doubt. I do try to understand their motivations and reasons for doing what they’re doing. And well, their motivations aren’t what they say they are and it’s not because I’m biased against them, it’s that their viewpoints are wholly inconsistent with their stated beliefs and their actions are in fact more in-line with this second unstated vile viewpoint.

I’m fully willing to sympathize, but I won’t sympathize with a cardboard cutout. I’d rather sympathize from a large distance away people who view their lives as so meaningless as to pitch themselves behind a death cult just to feel like they belong.

“Violently fighting against all signs of peace because of the antichrist”
Which is especially amusing that this isn’t even an accurate view iirc.

It appears that idiots are taking the execrable (both as literature and theologically) Left Behind as the truth. And even there it’s a stupid premise, being essentially “the Antichrist will bring peace because the first horseman has a bow but no arrows” (This is like assuming that someone saying “I have a gun” doesn’t also have bullets in today’s world. The ammo is implied, damn it!)

Denovian-

They are many things, smart or literate didn’t make the cut.

PIATOR,

Significant sections of the Democratic Party (including our hope and change president) treat these people as if they are arguing in good faith. The power they have been granted in our public process assumes they are operating in good faith. The result is a steady erosion of access to abortion, under Bush erosion even of access to contraception and remotely honest sex education in our public schools, and murder after murder after murder of abortion providers, each one of which is dismissed as the actions of a crazy loner.

I’m not sure how much more good faith I can give them, and I’m not sure, exactly, what that looks like. Okay, so they really believe its murder. What do we do now?

Piator—to answer your question, first of all, all the “pro-lifers” who have, in fact, been involved in getting an abortion, either for themselves or enabling someone else to get one, should treast themselves like murderers/accessories to murder. I wouldn’t interfere if they wanted to commit suicide for their crimes against humanity.
The ones who aren’t hypocrites, well, I’ve always said I believe in the sincerity (if not the sanity) of the ones who try to kill doctors than the ones who just make a lot of noise. A person is also sincere if they kill someone because the neighbor’s dog told them to. That doesn’t mean the rest of society should treat their perception of reality as equal to reality.

ema: The article explicitly makes the point that practically every clinic (except Dr. Hern’s) that perform abortions does not include that word in its name, and instead title themselves “family planning” or some other verbiage that is patently euphemistic given the actual purpose and practice focus of the clinic.  Ob/Gyns, by the way, come in many many varieties.  My closest friend is an Ob/Gyn.  He is also subspecialized as a reproductive endocrinologist, and has no objection to being called a “fertility doctor.” It’s what he does, after all.  (His practice is styled as being a reproductive medicine clinic, though he does not perform abortions.  Yet he gets frequent calls asking if he does for some odd reason.  Ponder that.)

Again, do not look at the term abortionist in a vacuum: Dr. Hern puts the word abortion point-blank in the name of his clinic, he is not trying to hide anything, and the use of “abortionist” repeatedly in the article is both an attempt to demystify or reclaim the term, and a stark and frank assertion that this is the raison d’etre for the clinic, something Dr. Hern and his staff feel is important to do…and yet also something that is admittedly unpleasant and confrontational on occasion for a variety of reasons.  The use of “abortionist” in that article thus had multiple purposes, and this was the point I was making.

PIATOR and others are arguing here that we should consider that many anti-choicers actually do view fetuses as living being, and therefore consider abortion to be mass murder, etc.  While it is important to know and understand the opposing point of view, it is equally important for those of us on the choice side to stop acting as if the anti-choicers can take the moral high ground or else score points by throwing out the term “abortionist” and somehow induce discomfort.  It’s an abortion clinic, Dr. Hern is primarily in the business of performing abortions (and is therefore an abortionist), and I have no problem with any of that.

If you truly and honestly considered a fetus to be a baby and a human being, as many of these people seem to do, wouldn’t the comparison between abortion and the Holocaust be reasonable?

Here’s the thing.  We’re not talking about fetuses.  The vast majority (<90%) of abortions are done during the embryonic stage.  When they talk about fetuses, they’re arguing in bad faith.  In reality, pregnancies with fetuses are only terminated in extreme cases, such as life or health of the pregnant woman, or the fetus.  Women don’t just wait until embryos become fetuses and then decide that they don’t want to be pregnant any more.  By using the term “fetus”, anti-choicers are implying that silly, frivolous women just wake up one day 7 months into a pregnancy and decide to have an abortion on a whim.  It doesn’t really matter what they think of fetuses, because fetuses are not relevant in the vast majority of abortion cases.  Also, never forget that the majority of anti-choicers stop caring about fetuses the second they become actual babies.  That makes it even harder to believe that they are arguing in good faith.  It’s tempting to believe that these people just have a basic, honest disagreement, but that’s not true in most cases.  There may be a few out there that just have a difference of opinion, but if you push most of them, it all comes down to “if she didn’t want a baby, she shouldn’t have had sex”.  The simple fact that they favor rape exemptions proves this point.

“The article explicitly makes the point that practically every clinic (except Dr. Hern’s) that perform abortions does not include that word in its name, and instead title themselves “family planning” or some other verbiage that is patently euphemistic given the actual purpose and practice focus of the clinic.”

To the best of my knowledge, the clinics whose “actual purpose and practice focus” is abortion are vanishingly rare.  Unless you’re operating someplace like Mississippi or Alabama where you’re literally the only clinic in the state providing elective abortions, or under circumstances like Hern’s where you’re a specialist dealing with medically and/or emotionally complex situations and consequently seeing patients referred from all over the country, there’s just not enough demand to justify a whole clinic doing little aside from abortion.  Most clinics that provide abortion services also provide a very broad spectrum of other reproductive-health-related services, from condoms to sex ed to sterilization to, in some cases, prenatal care.

Well, preying mantis, being an Alabama resident I can tell you there are in fact multiple clinics that perform abortions here, though not as many as there should be.  (Mississippi, rather famously, has only one left.)  Nonetheless, Dr. Hern’s clinic is openly styled as an abortion clinic (and though Dr. Tiller’s was not, it was in fact primarily focused on abortion).  While I take your point that there are many clinics at which abortion is only a fraction of the practice, I don’t think that alters any point I made above.