"The emotional and psychological pain does not go away..."

From the Operation Outcry Florida state leader, Rebecca Porter, on the above-linked article, "2,000 stories of regret swayed Court":

This is a story in today's St. Pete Times newspaper. This came from my letter to the editor. Not everything was put in, and some things, by being left out, are misunderstood. One example is that I am holding copies of the 2,000 affidavits (a notarized form answering nine questions that is sworn testimony) not just a book of names. Also the Justice Foundation is a Christian Law Firm, not a lobbying organization. But overall I think the writer did a great job. Please go to link of the story and you can leave a comment. As of now they are about 2/3 negative. We know speaking the truth brings out the hurting. Please pray for them.

Mine is one of those 2,000 affidavits. Emily's is one. I believe Ashli's is another one. And Lee Anne's. And a whole host of other readers and friends of this blog.

This brings me to Ellen Goodman. Once again, her stridency and falsehoods leapt off newspaper pages across this nation. I don't even bother to read her anymore, her writings are so inaccurate and misleading, but this time, she got my attention--and my blood boiling--again.

Ms. Goodman, you are the undisputed mistress of the liberal-side double standard:

"Let me remind you of something else. When Samuel Alito was a justice-wannabe seeking to replace O'Connor, he reassured lawmakers he'd respect precedent on abortion. When John Roberts talked about his reverence for both precedence and the court, he said he got a "lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps." That lump in his throat is now a chill up my spine.

As Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights said, "It took just a year for this new court to overturn three decades of established law."

Let me remind you of something else. When he testified at his confirmation hearing,

Judge Roberts described Brown v. Board of Education as a "restrained" decision. In ruling that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Brown effectively overruled the nearly six-decades-old error of Plessy v. Ferguson, and its removal of government-sponsored segregation from the political processes predictably resulted in tremendous disruption of established practices. Overturning Roe would lead to far less disruption, as it would return the issue of abortion policy to the people to determine through their elected representatives.

Three decades to make this one dent in Roe v. Wade et. al., and six decades to right the wrong of Plessy v. Ferguson. Even 5th Circuit Appellate Judge Edith Jones, writing about the motion to overturn Roe v. Wade wrote that

"Essentially, the [lower] 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.

"The facts" are those 2,000 legal affidavits.

Precedent for precedent's sake is not sacred and never was meant to be when it was wrong to begin with. Open your eyes, Ms. Goodman.

Why is it so impossible for you to accept that there are indeed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of us out here who regret our abortions? Justice Kennedy "got it," from reading our affidavits:

Kennedy pointed to a court filing by a woman who says she regrets her role in an abortion case decided alongside Roe.

He's referring to Sandra Cano, the former "Mary Doe" of the Doe v. Bolton companion case. Note how the papers don't mention her or the case by name?

"It seems unexceptional to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained," he wrote. "Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."

Goodman's falsehoods repeat ad nauseaum:

For this argument, Kennedy reached down into the legal briefs of anti-abortion activists who have been honing a political strategy based on the idea that abortion hurts women. They've tried to turn the pro choice position on its head, declaring that abortion opponents are the ones who truly care about women's health.

The idea? Honey, it isn't just "an idea," it is our life. Who has the holier-than-thou attitude now?

The abortion-hurts-women argument had its first incarnation in repeatedly debunked attempts to link abortion to breast cancer.

Umm, check your facts again, Ms. Goodman. These studies and medical experts finding links between abortion and breast cancer haven't been debunked, repeatedly or otherwise. I guess your factcheckers stopped at the year 1997, with your beloved Melbye study which has since been itself debunked yet is still touted by Planned Parenthood on its website.

Now anti abortionists have fabricated an entire mental illness they name post-abortion syndrome, which has been debunked by study after study.

Fabricated? Did the APA fabricate putting abortion into its DSM-III-R for 7 years as a psychosocial stressor that could lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Were all these studies showing links to increased clinical depression, neurotic depression, bipolar disorder, adjustment reactions, schizophrenic disorders, psychiatric admissions, alcohol- and drug-abuse since Surgeon General Koop's so-called "report" fabricated when they were vetted and published by respected medical journals?

Once again, Ms. Goodman's factcheckers fall down on the job, if she tells them to do anything of value at all.

Abortion is inherently harmful to women, their argument goes, because it violates a woman's true "nature," her role as a mother.

Actually that isn't the argument at all. Goodman ascribes something to all of us that makes us sound like we think we should all be barefoot and pregnant, which couldn't be further from the truth. Yet, count how many people reading her column now believe this lie.

I don't deny that some women feel regret as well as relief after an abortion.

Yet she does anyway, and she demeans us for daring to believe "the idea" that we do feel regret, and not relief.

Ms. Goodman, how can you be right when your counterpart contradicts your so-called "facts" in her column on this? Read Kathleen Turner, and learn something:

...in no single court case were doctors able to demonstrate that PBA was ever a medical necessity. Instead, all arguments were in the realm of the hypothetical. Indeed, the majority of PBAs are performed on the healthy babies of healthy women.

You both can't be telling the truth.

No doubt, Ms. Goodman, you honestly believe that what you write is all true. If people would only do some homework for themselves, they'd learn it is otherwise.

I, for one, cannot wait until you retire.