I wrote earlier in the week about Rachel Maddow’s praise and sympathy for Tammi Kromenaker, the director of the only abortion clinic left in North Dakota, the Red River Women’s Clinic. Kromenaker is hoping to defeat her state’s recent pro-life bill. A judge has since blocked the legislation, but, if it goes into effect August 1, it would ban abortions after six weeks -- the stage at which a baby’s heartbeat can be detected. Considering 80 percent of Red River’s abortions occur after seven weeks, the bill would effectively shut its doors as well.
Maddow isn’t the only one who thinks Kromenaker is a superhero for fighting to provide abortions in The Peace Garden State. In this fawning profile on The Daily Beast, the author glorifies Kromenaker and demonizes her pro-life opponents, at one point referring to the pictures of babies and fetuses pro-lifers send her as “hate mail.”
What none of these Kromenaker fans mention is the controversy that surrounded her clinic a few years back. In 2010, it was discovered that one of the clinic director’s employees had been operating illegally without an active medical license in North Dakota since June 30, 2010. Upon learning the employee’s license had been restored by the North Dakota State Board of Medical Examiners, Kromenaker sent this email to her supporters, telling them to keep the scandal “hush hush” until the news was officially announced. In addition, she makes light of the illegal charges, even inserting a couple smiley faces at the end.
Nothing to smile about is that fact that her Red River clinic performs over 1,200 abortions a year. Trying to appeal to people’s emotions, Kromenaker detailed the lengths women will go to to have an abortion in the state.
"They'll drive through a blizzard, they'll drive through a flood," Kromenaker told ABC News. "We've had women who've hit deer on the way here, who've had flat tires on the way here, and they'll come through hell or high water because they don't want to be pregnant."
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If the after-six-week ban takes effect, Kromenaker predicts women in the region will resort to unsafe, illegal abortions.
"I don't even want to think about what that would mean for women here. It's frightening to think about that," Kromenaker said. "The bottom line is women don't care [if abortions are legal]. They don't want to be pregnant."
With far fetched statements like these, Kromenaker, as well as other pro-choice activists who spew the same argument, doesn’t seem to have much faith in her own sex. That’s the difference between her and us pro-lifers. We believe in women. We believe they have the ability to have the baby and succeed as a mother -- to rise above their circumstances.
Hopefully, the North Dakota pro-life “heartbeat bill” will become law next week so that, instead of making Kromenaker out to be a victim, we succeed for the voiceless victims in the womb.
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