The XX Factor: What women really think.

Fishy Story From Former Director of Planned Parenthood

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte:

I'm sorry, Rachael, but this story you linked about Abby Johnson's sudden conversion from a Planned Parenthood director to an anti-choice fanatic has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese after being used for target practice. Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey! abortion removes a fetus from your uterus. Pro-choicers already know that. Johnson seems to be selling a story that's a tad too pat, too close to what anti-choicers want to hear.

After all, your average person in the United States has seen probably hundreds of sonograms in their lives, and most of them show a fetus at gestational age well beyond the point that most women get elective abortions. If you compare the ultrasound taken prior to an elective abortion, the feeling is actually one of being underwhelmed, because there's not much there compared to the ones we're used to seeing. The anti-choice sentimental devices rely therefore on ignorance more than illumination—their own mistaken understanding of what goes on in an abortion clinic ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).