Why is the Public Broadcasting System still, well, public? Why does a penny of taxpayer dollars go to this organization that so often and so predictably gets things laughably wrong?
In the latest such example, PBS NewsHour correspondent John Yang spoke with Communities Correspondent Gabrielle Hays on the increasing number of vasectomies men... er, "people with testicles," have undergone since the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, and the reasons for that increase. Not surprisingly, they get almost everything about this wrong. Here are some of the major howlers.
John Yang: Since the Supreme Court struck down the right to seek an abortion last year, health providers across the country say there is more interest in vasectomies as birth control.
Let me stop you right there, John; the Supreme Court did not strike down the "right to seek an abortion." This is laughably, hysterically wrong. What this case, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization did was to determine that there is no constitutional right to an abortion and return the matter to where it belongs, the various state legislatures. Since then, the republic has operated as it was designed to; some states have made abortion legal in all circumstances, and some have restricted it. Feel free to vote with your feet accordingly, as millions have done. But to say that the court "struck down the right to seek an abortion" is dishonest in the extreme.
Gabrielle Hays: It's important to note that almost immediately after this Dobbs decision came down last year that Missouri essentially made it illegal to get an abortion in the exception. The only exception was a medical emergency. And so providers tell me that, you know, they saw the number of people getting vasectomies rise as much as 100 percent last year.
Hang on... You mean, since Missouri passed a ban on abortion except in the case of a medical emergency — and, by the way, I'm not aware of any wall around Missouri preventing people from moving elsewhere — people have been seeking other means of birth control? As in, taking responsibility for the consequences of their own actions? Oh, the horror!
Gabrielle Hays: I spoke to a doctor, Dr. Esgar Guarin also known as Dr. G, who has a mobile clinic in Iowa, he came from Iowa to St. Louis to help with the — with vasectomy patients last week, and he tells me, even in his state where he is with his mobile clinic, he drives all over the state in order to bring access to people not only looking for the procedure, and his state, but people coming from out of state to get it as well.
I'm not seeing the problem here. So vasectomies would appear to be broadly available. Whatever your stance on abortion, isn't it prudent to be proactive in these matters, rather than reactive? But here's where it gets bizarre:
Gabrielle Hays: One person I spoke to last week told me that he got it after the Dobbs decision because he was afraid that at some point maybe the option wouldn't be available to him in the future.
I'm calling BS on that one. Either the person who spoke to Miss Hays is poorly informed on a catastrophic level, or he's dissembling; either that or Hays is dissembling herself. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue of the availability of vasectomies, and there are no cases on that subject appearing before the court at any time in the near future, nor are there likely to be. That's just plain nonsensical. In fact, it's just stupid.
Gabrielle Hays, of course, is a typically agenda-driven leftist. She adheres to all of the ridiculous "gender" dogma so popular on the left these days, as pointed out by Newsbusters:
In true PBS woke fashion, the terms “male” and “female” and “men” and “women” rarely appeared in two stories by Hays (one a television story, one an older PBS.org print story) about the sensitive and exclusively masculine procedure. One doctor Hays talked to resorted to the bizarre and awkward term “people with uteruses” to identify the class of people formerly known as “women.”
If I was able to roll my eyes any farther, I'd be looking at the back of my skull from the inside.
If birth control is your aim, it's baffling that anyone would choose an abortion over simpler, less intrusive methods, one of which, yes, is a vasectomy. I underwent the procedure myself, in the late '90s, after our youngest was born three months early and the doctor told us my wife "...would not survive another pregnancy." (The kid is 27 now and doing great, and so is her mother.) The procedure was uncomfortable, and I was sore in, well, that area for a couple of days, but there were no lasting consequences. And, yes, that seems preferable to something as invasive as the various abortion methods.
Abortion has been a hot button in American politics for years now. It will continue to be so, including in the 2024 election. But the left, as they do in so many issues (classic example, anything involving the Second Amendment) can be relied on, utterly, to be dishonest in their claims.
