Meet Rebecca Porter
Rebecca Porter is a Tampa resident who works for Operation Outcry. The group is very clear about their purpose.
OPERATION OUTCRY is the project of THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION to end legal abortion by exposing the truth about its devastating impact on women and families. We believe that this will be accomplished through prayer and with the testimonies of mothers who have taken the life of their own unborn babies and of others who have suffered harm from abortion. We are working to restore justice and to protect women, men, and children from the destruction that abortion causes.
OPERATION OUTCRY exposes the two great lies surrounding legalized abortion: 1) abortion is good and safe for women; and, 2) it is not a baby being aborted.
OPERATION OUTCRY reaches out to hurting women and makes available a national 24-hour, toll-free Help Line to help women deal with their grief and to offer hope and healing.
OPERATION OUTCRY has a national network of leaders to assist, encourage, and train women and others to speak out in the public arena and to collect affidavits (sworn testimony) for the historic legal effort to end legal abortion. PLEASE JOIN US
Googling Porter finds that Michelle Malkin ran with a bogus story that a Kerry campaign staffer tore Porter's "My abortion hurt me" sign. Check the Talon News link and you will find it is a dead web page. Talon News was run by GOPUSA President and CEO Bobby Eberle and had Jeff Gannon as a reporter.
The fake news site plagiarized the Wall Street Journal, White House press releases, the New York Times, Fox News Channel and Reuters. Bogus staged incidents of conservatives protesters getting signs torn by Kerry's people were widely discredited. It's interesting that only the disgraced Talon News picked up on Porter story. There is good reason to think it's pure bullshit.
Porter collected letters from women who had abortions. The lack of content and legal reasoning is troubling.
Each affidavit was just two or three sentences. They made no legal argument, contained no legal verbiage. Each just vented pain and guilt. "Twenty years later it still hurts, " one Florida woman wrote.
To call these affidavits is questionable. It's more like spamming the Supreme Court. It worked. Justice Anthony Kennedy was swayed enough by the affidavits into becoming the tie breaking vote. The problem is these letters present only one side of the debate.
"Two thousand women came forth, " says Olga Vives, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women. "But there are millions more whose lives have been saved."
Why didn't NOW or Planned Parenthood send thousands of affidavits to the Supreme Court? The anti-abortion movement is out of the mainstream. Polling numbers show Americans support Roe v Wade.
The Right has been more politically astute in getting the political system to support their goals. The Left has the numbers on their side. They need to learn how to use the support of Roe v Wade to their advantage. That includes holding Democratic candidates accountable. Groups like NARAL need to stop supporting moderate Republicans like Arlen Spector (and Joe Lieberman) who vote for anti-choice judges.
Labels: abortion, michelle malkin, rebecca porter, supreme court, talon news
posted by Michael Hussey @ 9:50 PM
19 Comments
19 Comments:
I'm so glad you took this up. What a dupe. He should have ASKED where are the letters from the other women??
Republican dirty tricks always end up with them stepping on their own dicks. (sorry) and yknow what? I hope the letters POUR in from the women who are NOT hurting. I don't even believe in the premise or the reality of any 'affidavit'. My ass. Anthony Kennedy can't fall on that. 'judge' roberts said he would never vote against PRECEDENT. (LOL!) They should have stopped consideration and investigated further. Now they start the whole battle up again when everything was fine. Except for these fricking nuts ...
I know Rebecca Porter and thankful that she is courageous enough to speak for thousands, if not millions of women...like myself...that have been hurt by legalized abortion. The incident with the John Kerry campaign is true. His staffers did tear up her sign "Abortion Hurt Me"...and there were witnesses. Abortion did hurt her. She was not allowed to take the pieces of the ripped sign. I am thankful that she's chosen to be a voice, in this nation, for women who deeply regret their uninformed choice.
I have counseled with hundreds of women who were not informed about the risks of abortion including associated physical and emotional trauma like scarred uterus', infertility, deep depression, suicidal ideation, miscarriage, addiction to drugs/alcohol. It is a sad thing that women, who regret their abortion, are now mocked, ridiculed, and rejected by the same people who told them abortion would help them. Abortion hurts and the memory last a life time. As one women told me, "I was told that I could go on with my life...all that I was left with was a life of pain, nightmares, regret and a dead baby."
Exactly who are these witnesses?
The story about the Kerry staffer tearing up Rebecca Porter's sign is true. I saw a few other reports about it, and attempts were made to get a comment from the Kerry campaign. The campaign didn't return calls.
Rebecca does not have a collection of letters from women hurt by abortion. Affidavits are notorized statements. Those signing the statements swore to tell the truth, which is why affidavits are called sworn testimony. The affidavits ask women to respond to 9 questions. There is quite a different between letters and sworn testimony.
The writer of this blog, Michael Hussey, should do his homework and research the facts rather than assume the that the sources of his "news" was accurate (it wasn't).
Anyone wanting to know more about the effects of abortion should visit wwww.afterabortion.org.
And, by the way, why is it that Planned Parenthood's president acknowledges she had an abortion but refuses to talk about it? After all, Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortion in the world. If it is so good women, why won't she tell us how helped her?
I'm well aware of what an affidavit is.
Question: was every woman who gave affidavits confirmed to have an abortion?
Question: what other media services picked up on Porter getting her sign torn? Why didn't she take legal action against Kerry for violated her First Amendment rights?
Anonymous, are you Porter?
vox populi, re" "He should have ASKED where are the letters from the other women??"
5th Circuit Appellate Judge Edith Jones read every last one of those 2,000 affidavits, when she considered the motion to overturn Roe v. Wade before passing it to the pre-Roberts Supreme Court. This is what she wrote:
"Essentially, the [court below the 5th Circuit] district court concluded that a 30-year delay, regardless of the circumstances, is too long as a matter of law. We disagree. ... Accordingly, the district court erred in initially determining that the 30-year delay was ‘unreasonable’ without examining the facts and circumstances of this particular case.
“…If courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe court knew…
“One may fervently hope that the Court will someday acknowledge such developments and re-evaluate Roe…accordingly. That the court’s constitutional decisionmaking leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the Court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication.”
Annie here, still.
My, how condescending some of you are. And I'm not anonymous. Your snide attitudes are the very reason why more women don't come forward to admit that we're regretting or had awful experiences because of our abortions. You call us "fricking nuts." How adult. How nice. I guess you're only "for women" as long as we don't regret our abortions. How "tolerant" of you.
“Porter collected letters from women who had abortions. The lack of content and legal reasoning is troubling.”
Porter didn’t collect letters. This is yet another case of the major media reporting it wrong to minimize its true impact. Operation Outcry, the law firm and its companion national women’s group collected legal affidavits. BIIIIIG difference.
There was no lack of content or legal reasoning either. To say that our stories of pain, grief and regret is a lack of content is an outright insult to 2, 00o women, myself included. The writer of this post ought to be ashamed of yourself for this insulting and completely uninformed, misguided post.
The legal reasoning falls under On several occasions, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned its own precedents using Rule 60(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, such as in the 1997 decision of Agostini v. Felton, which overturned a 12-year decision. Some courts have reversed themselves after as much as 41 years in some Rule 60 cases. When facts change or new facts and new evidence comes to being, in this case, 2,000 times as much evidence as was in Roe v. Wade—then Rule 60(b)(5) can apply. It is how Plessy v. Ferguson was chipped away at over decades until Brown v. Board of Education finally legally forbade segregation.
michael hussey, I am one of those witnesses. My legal affidavit is one of those 2,000. This kind of truth-telling, for women anyway, takes a lot of guts because you have to have it notarized by a notary public with your real name on it, even if you chose to be known in the text by a first name and last initial.
Michael, YOU may be aware of what legal affidavits are but vox populi questioned them and anon was responding actually to him/her, though she may have mixed up the two of you. Your sniping at her for that is like picking on someone's spelling. A picayune and childish thing to do.
You can tell your local newsmedia to do this for you, or you yourselves can get all 2,000 of them via the FoIA. They exist, they're real, and they were submitted to numerous appellate courts as well as the Supreme Court (prior to Roberts) and accepted as legal evidence.
So you're saying that even though it's good enough for the Supreme Court and other courts to take seriously, you still think it's bogus? Please.
Where have you ladies/guys been? This affidavit process has been ongoing for years. You don't know about it because the media doesn't want you to know about it. That doesn't mean it isn't viable or isn't legal. They all are. Every last one of them.
As for Rebecca Porter's story, if all your research consists of is "googling" then you sound like you're in good company with "facts-schmacks" Ellen Goodman, who regularly prints falsehoods in her column and who our readers helped force her to print a retraction on one such falsehood.
What happened to Porter did in fact happen, just as reported:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37644
http://www.lifenews.com/nat378.html
"LifeNews.com said in its attempt to get a comment, the Kerry campaign's Florida office said the national office in Washington fields all media calls. Then an assistant in the Washington office said he would have to find a Florida representative to handle the request. After failing to call back, LifeNews.com spoke twice with the Washington press assistant, Adam Abram, who would not comment and refused to provide a representative who would."
Have some class, folks, if you really want to be known for "tolerance" and "diversity."
And get yourselves some actual accurate facts. "'judge' roberts said he would never vote against PRECEDENT." Check your facts, folks: "What seems not to have been noticed is that Roberts in fact deftly repudiated Specter's notion that Roe is some sort of 'super-duper precedent' entitled to 'super stare decisis.'" http://www.nationalreview.com/whelan/whelan200509191136.asp
Oh, wait, you think National Review is a rightwing rag even while employing people who "worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1992 to 1995". NR must not know anything over there despite their decades of journalism experience and training. No, only Dan Rather is a true journalist. R i g h t.
Last one, for now anyway:
And michael hussey, it wasn't Rebecca who signed in as anonymous, it was another Operation Outcry member. There are tens of thousands of us. Get over it. You were wrong. And nothing any of you ever say or do again is going to silence us again.
As to your question, was every woman who gave affidavits confirmed to have an abortion? Have you ever personally, closely known a woman who seriously and grievously regrets her abortion? I would guess not, or you wouldn't be so callous as to even ask this. I've gotten this ridiculous question several times. What woman in her right mind would FAKE having had an abortion and regretting it, when she will get the condemnation, namecalling, and trash-talking that you here have resorted to?? You are out of your ever-loving mind if you think for one second any women would pretend to have gone through hell like this, just to fight abortion. Research has indicated that there could be millions of women silently regretting and suffering because of people who say what you and vox have said. Research at that website that anon gave you, if you have the cayunes to really do your homework.
If you think we're faking it, read this: http://afterabortion.blogspot.com/2004/04/march-4-25-04-continued.html . I dare you to tell me that any one of us would put up with this kind of vitriolic, vicious abuse from any prochoicer or proabortion person if we weren't postabortive and regretting it enough to stand up to this and to your thinly-veiled nastiness.
What other media services picked up on Porter getting her sign torn? Why don't you tell me which newspaper in the land was going to want to publicize this violent, intolerant, anti-free-speech activity on the part of the Presidential Candidate all but maybe 2 of them were endorsing for President? Why don't you tell me that?
As someone else wrote at the time, "Can you imagine the media firestorm if a similar incident happened at a Bush campaign rally to a person with a "pro-choice" sign? It would be the top story in the news."
"Why didn't she take legal action against Kerry for violated her First Amendment rights?"
Oh, yes, it's so easy for a man who thinks women would fake an abortion and regret to say that unless a woman takes legal action against the then-reigning Democratic presidential candidate, she can't possibly be telling the truth!
Where were your questions and your doubt when, at a Kerry rally in '04, "NARAL women told each other to link arms and began to surround the pro-life students [from George Washington University]. [The NARAL women] became angry and began to push and shove the pro-life women. The abortion advocates dragged Suanne barefoot over a rough gravel surface that caused her foot to bleed so much that she required medical attention afterwards."
http://www.lifenews.com/nat706.html
Where's your outrage at these incidents? Are you "for women" or aren't you? If you're for women, why only cast aspersions on those who are now against abortion? Answer me that.
You really ought to do some homework before you speak up like you just did.
(Since this doesn't seem to publish my entire name, it's Annie Banno, and I co-blog at After Abortion (http://www.afterabortion.blogspot.com ) and Abortion Pundit (http://www.abortionpundit.blogspot.com )
Sooo, Michael Hussey is the post author. I don't usually expect bloggers of the uber-left-liberal persuasion to give their real name so I don't usually read their names. Mea culpa.
Two last thoughts:
1. You swallow Media Matters stuff whole? Check out http://mediamatters.blogsome.com/ and http://factcheck.org/ and http://www.aim.org/static/19_0_7_0_C
2. "The Left has the numbers on their side."
Do they?
In a study done in 2000, 78% of National Abortion Rights Action League's membership was female, while 63% of National Right to Life Committee's was female. 32% of NARAL's women members admitted having had an abortion. Only 3% of NRLC women admitted having had an abortion. NARAL had a total membership of 156,000; NRLC, 12 million.
32% of 78% of 156,000 gives 39,000 such members, while 3% of 63% of 12 million yields 226,800 women who have had abortions.
226,800 post-abortive women in NRLC. 39,000 in NARAL. SIX TIMES MORE WOMEN WHO BECOME PUBLICLY ACTIVE IN THIS ISSUE REGRET THEIR ABORTIONS. Put another way, six out of every seven postabortive, publicly-active women regret their abortions enough to join NRLC. (You can DYO math since you probably won't trust mine)
[from the book, Achieving Peace In The Abortion War: Predictions on Possible Social Impacts of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Cognitive Dissonance as Structural Stressors, by Rachel MacNair, Ph.D.; http://www.fnsa.org/apaw/ch13.html ]
Your CNN poll is one of hundreds of polls, and people can find any one poll that says what they believe really represents truth.
For example, a CBS Poll taken almost the exact same days as the CNN one you cite found that 31% of
1,168 adults nationwide felt that "Abortion should be permitted in all cases," as it is now. A combined 63% would not support Roe v. Wade as the majority understand it, because these answered one of the following: "permitted, but subject to greater restrictions than it is now," "permitted only in cases of rape, incest or to save the woman's life," or "only to save the woman's life" or "not at all."
A Washington Post Poll. Feb. 22-25, 2007, of 1,082 adults nationwide found that only 16% think that "abortion should be legal in all cases" as it is now under the Roe/Doe decisions and all that built upon them. A combined 82% thought it should be different than it is now, in other words: "legal in most cases," "illegal in most cases" or "illegal in all cases."
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm
It all depends on how much information you give when you ask poll questions, and how accurate and unpolitically-worded (or how loaded) are the questions. For example, the results change again with the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll of this year, because the phrasing focuses people inward, onto a woman's fabricated "right to privacy" (which the constitution doesn't guarantee unconditionally, regardless of the fact that the Roe court created those rights where it wasn't the High Court's purview to do so), not on the respondent's "personal feeling about abortion."
Even just asking about Roe alone is misleading! Most people don't really know what Roe is and isn't!
I don't take anonymous comments seriously.
Life news is an anti-abortion site and World Net Daily is an internet conservative site. I want confirmed reports.
What, no response to the rest of my responses to you, Michael?
"widely discredited"??? MediaMatters.com is the one single site discrediting the story for you??
MediaMatters is a pro-abortion, liberal site. I want "confirmed reports" of your so-called discrediting of the incident, too.
Please do SHOW me the mainstream media news source that would WANT to do a story on those women or on Rebecca Porter when it made their golden boy-of-the-moment John Kerry look like a bastard.
You won't find one, at least not in DC or Tampa.
As for your "poll" done by The Century Foundation? "The Century Foundation is a left-liberal research foundation..." so says
http://www.lapn.net/links.html , a site for "democrats and progressives in Mid Michigan". Want further proof? Read this pro-choice-advocating tract: http://www.tcf.org/Events/10-12-00/transcript.pdf
If you discredit Porter's story, how about the Mich.State Univ. students, one of whom's foot was made to bleed when she was bodily dragged across gravel in flipflops while she respectfully protested John Kerry in Washington DC. Your Freedom of Information Act ought to get you copies of the police report they filed with the DC police, in particular the police officer who gave her medical assistance there on the spot.
But I guess the DC police are all sheysters too, to you.
If you require nonbiased sources, then you should produce them yourself. Until you do, you're just blowing smoke.
Funny how you accuse conservatives of the same things you're guilty of.
5th Circuit Appellate Judge Edith Jones isn't good enough a source for you on those affidavits and their reality.
Wow. I shouldn't be surprised.
lastly, you apparently didn't even read the entire St.Petersburg TImes article, which is now linked to here, http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/30/Worldandnation/2_000_stories_of_regr.shtml
"Her own affidavit is among the 100 from Florida."
Porter's the Florida state leader. That's it.
The SPT story was written awkwardly. Porter is not and has not been the only one collecting affidavits. What was submitted to the Supreme Court and all other courts before that, were and remain notarized legal documents.
Those of you who take all your facts from an article or two and dismiss anything but your own biased prochoice sources, are in the dark.
Let's see if that link comes through clearly now:
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/30/Worldandnation/2_000_stories_of_regr.shtml
Nope, it's not working.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/30/Worldandnation/
then after that last slash add this text tot he url and it should ink:
2_000_stories_of_regr.shtml
This comment has been removed by the author.
If you don't like abortion, don't get one. If you had one and feel guilty, get therapy. It is legal and sometimes necessary. Regret and revenge will make you more sick. Instead of trying to change the collective majority conscience to feel the guilt you feel, deal with what you have done personally and move on. Volunteer to help at a foster agency or do something positive that can actually help those who are already born into abusive or poverty stricken situations.
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