PrintFebruary 10, 2009
Abortion and Orwell
"War Is Peace." "Freedom is Slavery." "Ignorance is Strength."
These slogans are spoken in Newspeak, the fictional language of George Orwell's twisted utopia in 1984. By removing meaning from words and increasing state control over speech-and thought-Newspeak is designed to manipulate those who hear it.
In California, Newspeak is now spoken fluently by those who seek to advance a political agenda in healthcare by avoiding scrutiny.
Under the guise of "access to primary care," the Regents of the University of California have been conducting an experiment on women in Concord, Los Angeles and San Diego. Exploiting a pilot project program enacted in 1973 to address a gerontology workforce shortage, Healthcare Workforce Pilot Project (HWPP) #171 allows women seeking medical care to become subjects of social research.
The purpose of this experiment? "Demonstrate the role of advanced practice clinicians in expanding early pregnancy care."
That's Orwellian for "training non-physicians to perform first trimester abortions."
In the pilot project, approved in 2006 without legislative oversight, Planned Parenthood sites in three California cities suspended state regulations to use Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants to perform surgical abortions by suction aspiration.
The performance of this procedure by these personnel is prohibited by the Business and Professions Code of the state, the Board of Registered Nursing and the Medical Board of California. HWPP #171 avoids this practice ban in their application to the program by asserting that "the access to early abortion services is an important public health goal."
It is interesting, in the language of distortion, to note the population that is the focus of this public service. Though reporting that abortion rates have risen among poor and low-income women, the program sponsor at the University of California admits that the goal of the pilot project is to expand abortion practice and access, "particularly in underserved areas."
The project director, an attorney, apparently believes that the underserved populations of California-overwhelmingly Latino and African-American-would benefit from even higher rates of abortion: "It will create providers in underserved areas that need them the most...and integrate abortion services into previously existing health care networks."
At least this doublespeak is consistent with the stated goals of Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger: "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." (Woman, Morality, and Birth Control, New York Publishing Company, 1922.)
"The undeniably feebleminded should indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind," she wrote in 1921, the year she founded the organization that became Planned Parenthood.
The sponsor of the "surgical abortion by non-physicians" project, University of California, San Francisco's Bixby Center for Reproductive Health, must have missed the Newspeak memo about renaming abortion "early pregnancy care." They fund research called "The Early Abortion Project."
It's more difficult to convert numbers into Newspeak, as evidenced by the pilot project applications report of the projected three-year cost of the program: $1.3 million. Funding is provided by UC San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, The John Merck Fund and The Educational Foundation of America.
The taxpayers of California also foot the bill through the grant approval process and oversight provided by the state's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Professional license fees paid by doctors and nurses to the Board of Registered Nursing, the Medical Board of California and the American College of OB/Gyns also fund project review and site visits.
And the ultimate goal of the project couldn't be clearer: "Disseminate our abortion training and utilization model to other faculties and states interested in expanding the pool of primary care abortion providers."
Syme, the loyal Ministry of Truth word replacement specialist in 1984, would have been happy to visit our state in 2009: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
But not so beautiful when the legislature is deceived by doublespeak, and minority populations are targeted for social engineering. Does anyone care?
Sam Aanestad represents California's 4th Senate District, and is a member of the California Senate Health Committee.
