Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

New Petition Initiative To Stop
Coerced Abortions Less Vulnerable to Misrepresentation

  Group Announces Filing
of New Initiative In Hopes of Securing More Accurate Ballot Summary from
Carnahan

St. Louis, MO (January 28, 2007) – Last month, Secretary of State Robin
Carnahan approved for circulation a petition by the Stop Forced Abortions
Alliance which the Secretary’s 100-word ballot summary describes as an act
"banning abortions."

Dissatisfied with the ballot language, Stop Forced
Abortions has filed a new initiative with the Secretary of State’s office.  The
new initiative now explicitly states that "It is not the intention of this law
to make unlawful an abortion that is otherwise lawful."  Other changes
contradicting the Secretary’s summary were also made.

According to Paula Talley, one of the groups organizers, the new language
should preclude any further misrepresentations of the initiative as a
ban.

"Our initiative is properly titled the Prevention of Coerced and
Unsafe Abortions Act," said Talley, "All it really does is allow women to hold
abortion doctors liable if they fail to screen for evidence of coercion or other
risk factors.  But you didn’t see any of that in the ballot summary Carnahan
issued for our first initiative filing. She wrongly describes it as making
certain abortions illegal. In fact, it makes nothing illegal. "

Controversy over the initiative erupted last November. Fully ten days before
the group’s first initiative was made public, Planned Parenthood and NARAL began
issuing news releases describing the unpublished initiative as a radical ban on
most abortions.  When Carnahan’s office subsequently issued ballot language
which also described it as a ban, the Stop Forced Abortions Alliance raised the
concern that Carnahan had leaked the initiative language to Planned Parenthood
in order to subject it to preemptive attacks. 

According to the Stop Forced Abortions website, the leak and and ballot
language made it appear as though Carnahan had “conspired with Missouri’s
largest abortion provider to construct a ballot title which falsely
characterizes the initiative as a ‘ban.’"

According to Talley, “This is a very pro-woman law. If it had been in place
in 1980, I would have been spared the years of grief and depression which
followed my own unwanted abortion,” said Talley.

Talley says she was
pressured into an abortion which went against her moral beliefs by her employer.
She also says she was at greater risk of more severe emotional reactions to the
abortion because of her prior history of sexual abuse and depression.

“The abortion counselor never asked if I was being pressured nor did she
inquire about my psychological history,” said Talley. “If she had, she should
have known that in my case abortion was contraindicated. This law would help to
prevent other women from being victims of negligent pre-abortion
screening.”

“It achieves this end simply by correcting a loophole in the
law that currently denies women right to redress for negligent screening,"
Talley adds. "The only people who can oppose this legislation are those who care
less about protecting women than they do about protecting the abortion
industry’s profits.”

According to the Stop Forced Abortions website, as
many as 64 percent of women having abortions feel pressured into them by other
people. The group argues that most abortion providers have "abandoned any effort
to screen for coercion and other risks in order to reduce costs and maximize
profits."

In a 22 page report titled Forced Abortion in America
the group describes cases of women pressured, coerced, and violently abused into
submitting to unwanted abortions.  The report is available at www.stopforcedabortions.org.

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A copy of the new initiative language
is available for viewing at www.stopforcedabortions.org