#abortion clinics

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A new Manitoba law restricting protests near clinics and hospitals where abortions are performed is to take effect Saturday. The NDP government introduced a bill last year that creates buffer zones of between 50 and 150 metres around such health facilities, as well as the homes of abortion providers. Inside those zones, people are not allowed to block access, attempt to dissuade people from getting an abortion or harass or intimidate individuals.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[gwydionmisha]

Trump's Justice Department limits cases over blocked access to abortion clinics

The reason the law preventing them blocking clinics is there because the anti-bodily autonomy protesters are violent and intimidating.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google makes millions on paid abortion disinformation

Google’s search quality has been in steady decline for years, and Google assures us that they’re working on it, though the most visible effort is replacing links to webpages with lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a confident habitual liar chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

The internet is increasingly full of garbage, much of it written by other confident habitual liar chatbots, which are now extruding plausible sentences at enormous scale. Future confident habitual liar chatbots will be trained on the output of these confident liar chatbots, producing Jathan Sadowski’s “Habsburg AI”:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

But the declining quality of Google Search isn’t merely a function of chatbot overload. For many years, Google’s local business listings have been terrible. Anyone who’s tried to find a handyman, a locksmith, an emergency tow, or other small businessperson has discovered that Google is worse than useless for this. Try to search for that locksmith on the corner that you pass every day? You won’t find them — but you will find a fake locksmith service that will dispatch an unqualified, fumble-fingered guy with a drill and a knockoff lock, who will drill out your lock, replace it with one made of bubblegum and spit, and charge you 400% the going rate (and then maybe come back to rob you):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Google is clearly losing the fraud/spam wars, which is pretty awful, given that they have spent billions to put every other search engine out of business. They spend $45b every year to secure exclusivity deals that prevent people from discovering or using rivals — that’s like buying a whole Twitter every year, just so they don’t have to compete:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-a-google-antitrust-case-could/

But there’s an even worse form of fraudulent listing on Google, one they could do something about, but choose not to: ad-fraud. For all the money and energy thrown into “dark SEO” to trick Google into putting your shitty, scammy website at the top of the listings, there’s a much simpler method. All you need to do is pay Google — buy an ad, and your obviously fraudulent site will be right there, at the top of the search results.

There are so many top searches that go to fraud or malware sites. Tech support is a favorite. It’s not uncommon to search for tech support for Google products and be served a fake tech-support website where a scammer will try to trick you into installing a remote-access trojan and then steal everything you have, and/or take blackmail photos of you with your webcam:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-search-ads-infiltrated-again-by-tech-support-scams/

This is true even when Google has a trivial means of reliably detecting fraud. Take the restaurant monster-in-the-middle scam: a scammer clones the menu of a restaurant, marking up their prices by 15%, and then buys the top ad slot for searches for that restaurant. Search for the restaurant, click the top link, and land on a lookalike site. The scammer collects your order, bills your card, then places the same order, in your name, with the restaurant.

The thing is, Google runs these ads even for restaurants that are verified merchants — Google mails the restaurant a postcard with a unique number on it, and the restaurant owner keys that number in to verify that they are who they say they are. It would not be hard for Google to check whether an ad for a business matches one of its verified merchants, and, if so, whether the email address is a different one from the verified one on file. If so, Google could just email the verified address with a “Please confirm that you’re trying to buy an ad for a website other than the one we have on file” message:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google doesn’t do this. Instead, they accept — and make a fortune from — paid disinformation, across every category.

But not all categories of paid disinformation are equally bad: it’s one thing to pay a 15% surcharge on a takeout meal, but there’s a whole universe of paid medical disinformation that Google knows about and has an official policy of tolerating.

This paid medical disinformation comes from “crisis pregnancy centers”: these are fake abortion clinics that raise huge sums from religious fanatics to buy ads that show up for people seeking information about procuring an abortion. If they are duped by one of these ads, they are directed to a Big Con-style storefront staffed by people who pretend that they perform abortions, but who bombard their marks with falsehoods about health complications.

These con artists try to trick their marks into consenting to sexual assault — a transvaginal ultrasound. This is a prelude to another fraud, in which the “sporadic electrical impulses” generated by an early fetal structure is a “heartbeat” (early fetuses do not have hearts, so they cannot produce heartbeats):

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heartbeat-bills-called-fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435

If the victim still insists on getting an abortion, the fraudsters will use deceptive tactics to draw out the process until they run out the clock for a legal abortion, procuring a forced birth through deceit.

It is hard to imagine a less ethical course of conduct. Google’s policy of accepting “crisis pregnancy center” ads is the moral equivalent of taking money from fake oncologists who counsel people with cancer to forego chemotherapy in favor of juice-cleanses.

There is no ambiguity here: the purpose of a “crisis prengancy center” is to deceive people seeking abortions into thinking they are dealing with an abortion clinic, and then further deceive them into foregoing the abortion, by means of lies, sexually invasive and unnecessary medical procedures, and delaying tactics.

Now, a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate finds that Google made $10m last year on ads from “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-made-millions-from-ads-for-fake-abortion-clinics/

Many of these “crisis pregnancy centers” are also registered 501(c)3 charities, which makes them eligible for Google’s ad grants, which provide free ads to nonprofits. Marketers who cater to “crisis pregnancy center” advertise that they can help their clients qualify for these grants. In 2019, Google was caught giving tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of free ads to “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/12/google-advertising-abortion-obria

The keywords that “crisis pregnancy centers” bid up include “Planned Parenthood” — meaning that if actual Planned Parenthood clinics want to appear at the top of the search for “planned parenthood,” they have to outbid the fraudsters seeking to deceive Planned Parenthood patients.

Google has an official policy of requiring customers that pay for ads matching abortion-related search terms to label their ads to state whether or not they provide abortions, but the report documents failures to enforce this policy. The labels themselves are confusing: for example, abortion travel funds have to be labeled as “not providing abortions.”

Google isn’t afraid to ban whole categories of advertising: for example, Google has banned Plan C, a nonprofit that provides information about medication abortions. The company erroneously classes Plan C as an “unauthorized pharmacy.” But Google continues to offer paid disinformation on behalf of forced birth groups that claim there is such a thing as “abortion reversal” (there isn’t — but the “abortion reversal” drug cocktail is potentially lethal).

This is inexcusable, but it’s not unique — and it’s not even that profitable. $10m is a drop in the bucket for a company like Google. When you’re lighting $45b/year on fire just to prevent competition, $10m is chump change. A better way to understand Google’s relationship to paid disinformation can be found by studying Facebook’s own paid disinformation problem.

Facebook has a well-documented problem with paid political disinformation — unambiguous, illegal materials, like paid notices advising people to remember to vote on November 6th (when election day falls on November 5th). The company eventually promised to put political ads in a repository where they could be inspected by all parties to track its progress in blocking paid disinformation.

Facebook did a terrible job at this, with huge slices of its political ads never landing in its transparency portal. We know this because independent researchers at NYU’s engineering school built an independent, crowdsourced tracker called Ad Observer, which scraped all the ads volunteers saw and uploaded them to a portal called Ad Observatory.

Facebook viciously attacked the NYU project, falsely smearing it as a privacy risk (the plugin was open source and was independently audited by Mozilla researchers, who confirmed that it didn’t collect any personal information). When that didn’t work, they sent a stream of legal threats, claiming that NYU was trafficking in a “circumvention device” as defined by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a felony carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine — for a first offense.

Eventually, NYU folded the project. Facebook, meanwhile, has fired or reassigned most of the staff who work on political ad transparency:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

What are we to make of this? Facebook claims that it doesn’t need or want political ad revenue, which are a drop in the bucket and cause all kinds of headaches. That’s likely true — but Facebook’s aversion to blocking political ads doesn’t extend to spending a lot of money to keep paid political disinfo off the platform.

The company could turn up the sensitivity on its blocking algorithm, which would generate more false positives, in which nonpolitical ads are misidentified and have to be reviewed by humans. This is expensive, and it’s an expense Facebook can avoid if it can suppress information about its failures to block paid political disinformation. It’s cheaper to silence critics than it is to address their criticism.

I don’t think Google gives a shit about the $10m it gets from predatory fake abortion clinics. But I think the company believes that the PR trouble it would get into for blocking them — and the expense it would incur in trying to catch and block fake abortion clinic ads — are real liabilities. In other words, it’s not about the $10m it would lose by blocking the ads — Google wants to avoid the political heat it would take from forced birth fanatics and cost of the human reviewers who would have to double-check rejected ads.

In other words, Google doesn’t abet fraudulent abortion clinics because they share the depraved sadism of the people who run these clinics. Rather, Google teams up with these sadists out of cowardice and greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

[Image ID: A ruined streetscene. Atop a pile of rubble sits a dilapidated shack. In front of the shack is a letterboard with the word ABORTIONS set off-center and crooked. In the foreground is a carny barker at a podium, gesturing at the sign and the shack. The barker's head and face have been replaced with the Google logo. Within the barker's podium is a heap of US$100 bills.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[killezramiller]

Posting this for reference bc I found out recently that you can order abortion pills online if you can't access a clinic in America and I'm also linking directories to abortion providers in Canada (alt) and the US and because it's personally relevant, if you happen to be a Canadian who's been denied an abortion by a practitioner, here is a list of provincial medical colleges so you can report them.

[artworktragedy]

Need or want an abortion? That’s the only necessity required to make abortion “okay” – as long as you want / need / aren’t ready to have a kid for ANY reason, including just don’t want one yet – or ever – here is one of many reliable and safe resources. And remember, abortion is not murder! Abortion is NOT murder! Please share! Women’s lives depend on it! And also, as a random fact to…

[dosesofcommonsense]

Bongino Report Early Edition with Evita

https://rumble.com/v58oolg-kamala-harris-first-campaign-ad-is-very-cringe-ep.08.html

Topics:

Fed-run (and taxpayer-funded) media sucks. Media now downplaying and gaslighting Trump getting shot.

Remember when the Fed govt used taxpayer money to insidiously advertise the mRNA covid bioweapon shots?

The sexualization and growing vulnerability of women and children promoted by the DNC.

Kamala still IS the border czar...the czar responsible for the increases in human trafficking, violent crime, and drug epidemic".

"Kamala Harris' biggest accomplishment as VP is [supposedly, according to "Pocahontas" Warren] being the first VP to visit an abortion clinic...yet, Kamala voted for a bill protecting infanticide (or babies who survived an attempted abortion).

Kamala is more extreme than Joe on abortions.

The first presidential ad from Kamala. (1) That rally is just 3800 people. (2) It looks like a civil rights video for the trans community. (3) As Beyonce sings of freedom, Kamala's talking points remove freedoms. (4) She brings back her push to give free healthcare for all [who's paying for this?] and even to illegals over Americans. (5) How to jail opponents and call it justice. (6) The weaponized DOJ allows Biden-Harris to be authoritarians. Do you think they aren't going to fight to keep that level of power?

Chris Wray lies to Congressional hearing. [The Dobbs Decision returns the abortion decision to the States.]

Bill Mayer downplays God, because he mistakenly labels Christianity as religion...though it doesn't dismiss his statements.

The emotional and spiritual brokenness in the wake of Leftism.

[gettothedancing]

A recently released, five-minute undercover video (part one of a two-part investigation) by Project Veritas (PV) shows a conversation between a woman identified as Lashauna — said to be the Managing Director of Planned Parenthood in Kansas City, Missouri — and a male PV investigator (who is off-screen). The male investigator is inquiring about obtaining an abortion for a 13-year-old girl. The full footage had not yet been released at the time of this article’s publication.

The video highlights the ease with which the abortion industry partakes in potentially breaking the law and trafficking girls for abortions. Lashauna said parents are never informed of the abortions because Planned Parenthood considers a thirteen-year-old to be an “adult.” However, state law does not.

Missouri law states that those 13 years old and younger cannot consent to sex with anyone, and those ages 14, 15, and 16 years old cannot consent to sex with someone who is more than four years older. In addition, Missouri law states that no minor may consent to an abortion. Planned Parenthood is required to report the sexual abuse of this 13-year-old girl. In Kansas, where Planned Parenthood was going to send the girl for an abortion, the age of consent is 16 and parental consent is required for a minor to undergo an abortion.

[andritambunan]

Latest for The San Francisco Chronicle

Abortion clinics in rural California challenge state’s reputation as a haven for reproductive rights. 

The only surgical abortion clinic in a nearly 100-mile radius in Redding, and every Wednesday it performs operations it is ringed by placard-waving opponents yelling at the women going in to repent and keep their babies. The area is so hostile to abortion rights that the clinic has to fly doctors in from the Bay Area because nobody nearby wants to risk their safety. 

In a state that presents itself as a safe sanctuary for abortion, the intensifying protests here are a prime example of how that image is not universal — especially in far-flung areas. And how it can be terrifying for women who see clinics like this as their only practical choice for abortion care.

Here, and in other rural areas, the fight over abortion rights has only ratcheted up since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturning the national right to abortion, according to those on both sides of the abortion debate. With sparse resources in the sticks, those who perform abortions say they feel like they are under siege. Abortions still take place in Redding, but only after women are compelled to pass through a gauntlet of hostility and pleadings for them to reconsider. (By Kevin Fagan, Reporter)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/abortion-california-clinics-protests-19798556.php

[simplegenius042]

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[olganmwriter]

#TuesdayBookBlog Under the Banner of Valor (Valorie Dawes Thrillers Book 5) by Gary Corbin (@garycorbin)

Hi, all: I bring you a book by an author I’ve reviewed before, and a series I’m also acquainted with. Under the Banner of Valor (Valorie Dawes Thrillers Book 5) by Gary Corbin Under the Banner of Valor (Valorie Dawes Thrillers Book 5) by Gary Corbin A shadowy alliance of extremists start shooting up abortion clinics…and Val’s best friend Beth lies in the cross-hairs. When a fanatical sniper…

[dailyworldecho]

[artworktragedy]

A Fetus and Embryo are NOT a BABY, THUS, again I'm reminding you... Be safe and I'm here if any of you need me <3 abortoin care matters so much.

Life is precious, but being a developing embryo or fetus does not mean they are a baby or child. Women’s lives are precious. If anti’s truly loved and cared for women, abortion bans would NOT exist anymore. https://www.youtube.com/live/DVvqF9ngmy8?si=WPiP-4LgWyUt8QzH

[wondernwriter]

Totally understandable!!!

[gettothedancing]

The defendants were indicted for their participation in an October 2020 rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion facility run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation stating that if a child was born alive at his facility during an abortion, “we would not help it.”

Two defendants – Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty – cited Live Action’s InHuman video as informing their belief that abortion survivors might be being left to die at WSC, which in turn motivated their decision to participate in the rescue action at Santangelo’s facility.

However, calling the video “gossip from propagandists” (despite the fact that the video showed the abortionist in his own words) presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly would not allow the video itself to be admitted into evidence. 

Bias on the part of the prosecution was evidenced by its own word choices. For example, government attorneys referred to a three-day abortion procedure as “care” and as a “treatment” that was “absolutely needed.” 

Government attorneys also made sarcastic, condescending remarks to and about the defendants, with one caustically remarking, “That’s convenient,” after a defendant said she could not remember a specific detail.

The judge herself was not above entering into heated exchanges. Sparks flew after defendant Herb Geraghty asserted under cross-examination that federal law prohibits certain types of abortion procedures nationwide:

(Gov. Attorney) Patel: You know that abortions are legal in the District of Columbia? Geraghty: I know that some abortions are, but partial birth abortion and abortion that a fetus survives outside the womb–  Patel: Sir–  Judge Kollar-Kotelly: Sir, as a practical matter, that’s not correct. There are no statutes in the District of Columbia that say anything about limitations on abortion.  Geraghty: There’s federal laws, Your Honor.  Judge Kollar-Kotelly: You are going to be the legal expert here? I suggest that you not get into that.

However, partial-birth abortion, or D&X, is indeed outlawed under the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.

During deliberations on Friday, the jury sent three questions to the judge.

First, they asked: What do “oppression” and “intimidation” mean as defined by law?

Second, pertaining to a particular client of the abortion facility who was on the final day of a three-day abortion procedure and was experiencing labor pains when she arrived at WSC on the day of the rescue: What were the exact medical symptoms of the woman who collapsed in the hallway?

And lastly: What is the nature of ‘treatment’ for each of the different 3 days of ‘procedures’ at the Washington Surgi-Center?

There was a discussion about whether to define “oppression” and “intimidation” narrowly, as in the FACE Act, or more broadly, as it frequently is under conspiracy charges. Ultimately, the judge settled on a broad definition. With regard to the second and third questions, the judge gave the jury no answers; the second on the grounds that private medical conditions are not relevant, and the third on the grounds that there was no evidence given about specific abortion procedures during the trial.

More can be read about the trial at the links below:

Witness testimony in federal trial of pro-life rescuers begins, with court’s bias on display

Prosecution calls more witnesses in day two of pro-life rescuers’ federal trial

Arresting officers take stand at FACE Act trial in DC as judge warns religious pro-lifers on-site

FACE Act trial judge calls video of abortionist that motivated defendants ‘gossip from propagandists’

Defense and prosecution rest in FACE Act trial, as judge appears ignorant of federal abortion law

Defense in FACE Act trial closing arguments: Criteria not met for guilty verdict

[liberaljane]

It was hard to have an abortion in the United States before Roe fell, and now it is even harder.

I teamed up with Sex Ed with DB to explore the various barriers to abortion access. Beyond the legal landscape, there are many things that can prevent someone from getting care.

(alt-text included on all pieces)