{"id":1584,"date":"2005-05-30T10:37:39","date_gmt":"2005-05-30T17:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/30\/pro-life-leaders-defend-system-of-forced-abortion\/"},"modified":"2005-05-30T10:37:39","modified_gmt":"2005-05-30T17:37:39","slug":"pro-life-leaders-defend-system-of-forced-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1584","title":{"rendered":"Pro-life leaders defend system of forced abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Alas” reader Glaivester <\/a>emailed me a link to this item on Clarkstooksbury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Officials on Tuesday also confirmed<\/a> what an ABCNEWS 20\/20 investigation had found–that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs.<\/p>\n

“When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion,” said Tu Xiao Mei, a woman who lost her job after refusing an abortion.<\/p>\n

“With 11,000 Chinese workers here, I have never seen a Chinese garment factory worker have a baby,” said human rights worker Eric Gregoire. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Saipan, by the way, is an American territory. We own it. But a loophole in the law gives Saipan the right to set its own labor laws. The result is a system that’s hard to distinguish from slavery.<\/p>\n

Most of the workers are “young women from China who have been promised by recruiters that they are going to good jobs in America,” Ross reported.<\/p>\n

“Instead many find themselves kept behind barbed wire, in rat-infested labor camps, and put to work in huge Chinese- and Korean-owned garment factories–often under sweatshop conditions–making clothes for the American market,” he said.<\/p>\n

The clothes can legally be labeled “Made in the USA.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, so let’s consider Tom DeLay. This is a man who can’t stand the idea of “Plan B,” because he thinks it’s abortion. So why does he passionately defend a system in which pregnant women are forced to get abortions against their wills?<\/p>\n

Saipan has spent millions on Washington lobbyists and given top Republicans in Congress free trips to the beautiful Pacific island, including one over Christmas for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.<\/p>\n

“You represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America,” he told outgoing Governor Froilan Tenorio, a distant cousin of the current governor, at a dinner in Saipan this past New Year’s eve.<\/p>\n

DeLay and other Republicans have vowed to fight to keep the laws the way they are on Saipan. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as I – and I suspect all pro-choicers – are concerned, it’s cause for horror for any woman, anywhere, to have reproductive decisions forced on her. That’s true regardless of if it’s a woman being forced to give childbirth because her government has banned abortion, or a woman being forced to abort because she’s been tricked into a job in a US territory with no labor rights.<\/p>\n

Do pro-lifers see anything wrong with this situation? I’m sure the pro-lifers who occasionally post on “Alas” (hi, Glaivester! hi, Robert! hi, Emily!) will find it objectionable. Maybe they’ll even send an outraged letter to DeLay’s office.<\/p>\n

But will the pro-life leadership <\/em>care at all? Will the pro-life leadership organize to pressure “pro-life” Republicans to take a stand against forced abortions in a US territory? I’m not holding my breath. They’ve pushed policies that increase abortion<\/a> in the past, and I’m sure they’ll keep doing so in the future. If they can be judged by their actions, it seems that pro-life leaders are actually comfortable with increased and forced abortions, so long as it’s happening to women who aren’t from the first world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Alas” reader Glaivester emailed me a link to this item on Clarkstooksbury. Officials on Tuesday also confirmed what an ABCNEWS 20\/20 investigation had found–that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs. “When I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}