After the city of St. Louis, Missouri, passed an “abortion sanctuary” law discriminating against pro-life pregnancy centers, Governor Eric Greitens called a special session of the Missouri Legislature to protect these centers’ rights. A press release on the session in June 2017 noted that the session would “focus on protecting pregnancy resource centers and proposals for common-sense health and safety standards in abortion clinics.” Gov. Greitens stated in a video at the time that a court decision had “weakened our state’s health standards in abortion clinics,” so the session would propose some “common-sense standards to keep Missourians safe.” Greitens said:
We’re proposing, for example, that abortion clinics should have an annual safety inspection.
We’re proposing that these clinics should have a plan for complications.
And we’re proposing a fix that will stop abortion clinics from interfering with emergency responders. If a woman needs help, abortion clinics shouldn’t be able to tell an ambulance to come slowly–to not use their lights and sirens–or to go around to the back gate, just because they are worried that an ambulance arriving might make their abortion clinic look bad.
While some might think that surely there are already annual inspections, plans for complications, and standard procedures for 911 calls in place at abortion facilities, this is not necessarily the case. All three of these proposals address actual gaps and problems related to safety protocol at abortion facilities.
Live Action News’ Kristi Burton Brown reported at the time of the special session:
Under the abortion sanctuary law, landlords could be forced to rent their properties to abortion facilities, and employers (including pregnancy centers) who did not want to hire abortion advocates could be punished.
A law proposed in the Missouri House would fix this discrimination against employers and property owners with pro-life beliefs. “We’re calling a special session to support the people doing this vital work to help women and children,” Gov. Greitens said….
Regarding ambulance calls, Brown writes:
This has become a huge and constant problem at the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, where a woman has been transported by ambulance from the abortion facility every six weeks, on average, since 2009. The St. Louis Planned Parenthood has also received multiple Statement of Deficiency Reports from state health inspectors. Over half of the violations “related to failure to provide a safe and sanitary environment.” In January, Live Action News reported that “inspections ‘took place in 2009, 2013, 2015, and 2016’ but 61 percent of the 210 incidents occurred just last year, in 2016.”
Now, Gov. Greitens is speaking out on the biased and inaccurate media reporting on this special session called to protect the rights of pro-lifers in the state and to protect women from a predatory abortion industry:
Greitens said in the video:
Newsweek had a headline that said “use of birth control could cause Missouri women to lose jobs and houses.”… The San Francisco Gate said… “landlords will be able to evict tenants for having an abortion, getting pregnant while unmarried, or even simply using birth control.”… This is 100% false. It’s actual fake news. They just made it up…. When we asked Newsweek to actually read the bill, they had to report that they had erroneously reported, as had Bustle, the Associated Press, and Feministing. They wrote that the bill was widely misinterpreted by the media and their new headline said that women on birth control could NOT be barred from working — the exact opposite of the fake news lie that they’d been spreading before ….
Media bias in favor of the abortion industry is rampant, with members of the media frequently using abortion giant Planned Parenthood’s own talking points as if they were proven facts — with no actual fact checking whatsoever. For example, in the video below, you can see how members of the media parrot Planned Parenthood’s claims that abortion equates to only 3 percent of its services — a claim given “three Pinocchios” by the not-exactly-pro-life Washington Post:
Bottom line: It helps to actually read the text of the bill you’re protesting before you publish an article making false claims about it. But then, facts never really were the strong suit of the abortion industry or its supporters.
