Naomi Knows How To Keep Her Knees Together.

Meet the abortion criminalizers’ latest darling: Naomi Lakritz. And why is Naomi smiling? It may be that she is happy that she has finally been able to write a scolding tirade against women that Naomi hates because unlike Naomi, they just won’t keep their knees tightly together.

Her opinion piece in the Calgary Herald is chock-full of US statistics and the same-old, same-old slurs and accusations that abortion-criminalizers sling at Dr Morgentaler. For example, the ‘estimate’ about his income. Check your facts much, Naomi? Clinics that are staffed with specialized physicians, nurses and licensed therapists aren’t profit makers.

But does Naomi stop with her gross slandering of Dr Morgentaler? No, she moves on to attack women who have abortions. If they are not the “heroes” that Naomi claims that women who don’t have abortions are, what are they?

Selfish – Naomi doesn’t actually say that, but she implies it in so many ways. She dismisses

… women whose lives would be jeopardized by giving birth, for modern medicine can successfully manage high-risk pregnancies. The Public Health Agency of Canada reports that the 1997-2000 maternal mortality rate for Canada was 6.1 deaths for every 100,000 live births. These women were pregnant by choice, but died from some emergency that arose at the end; they were not “forced” to have babies against their will because abortion was unavailable.

Naomi, have you considered that hundreds more women (most of whom had planned their pregnancy only to face a heart-wrenching decision) could have died or been deprived of the possibility for a future pregnancy had they not followed their attending physician’s advice to abort? But I’m sure that your smug opinion piece will greatly cheer up the family members whose spouse, daughter, sister or mother did not survive a high-risk pregnancy.

Callous sluts – She insinuates it in the manipulative wording and selective information that she uses: “only five per cent of rapes result in pregnancies” – oops, Naomi must have overlooked the fact that incest and sexual assault are, according to most law enforcement agencies, largely under-reported crimes. Also this: “women going back for their second, third or higher abortion are twice as likely to be over 30. That means they’re well-established in their jobs and adult lives, and they’re aborting purely for convenience. In 2004, 30 per cent of abortions in Canada were repeat ones. These women are callously using abortion as birth control”. Is that last sentence a fact or an opinion, Naomi?

So. Naomi writes, purportedly about the heroism of women who don’t have abortions. Does she mention the real hardships, the lack of community resources, the daily grind of poverty and isolation many of these women face? No. Naomi’s opinion piece is actually an attack on choice, on Dr Morgentaler and on women who terminate an unintended or a life-threatening pregnancy. Exactly who is the manipulative bully?