Carol Everett (Photo: The Heidi Group).
In the not enough facepalm in the universe category, Texas legislature has designated 1.65 million dollars to a non-medical based, anti-abortion group, on the basis of aborted fetuses flooding the sewers, and somehow or another, causing the general water supply to be contaminated with STDs or HIV, because that’s just oh so realistic. Honestly, this is so goddamned embarrassing.
Carol Everett is the founder and CEO of The Heidi Group, an anti-abortion organization that gives women health “advice,” but is not a medical provider and can’t perform any health care services.
Earlier this month, Everett testified at a hearing at the Austin, Texas statehouse on a proposed requirement that women either bury or cremate the remains of an aborted fetus. According to The Austin Chronicle, Everett testified about her concerns of an impending public health disaster if fetuses were flushed down toilets. She argued that the general public could be afflicted with STDs or even HIV due to fetuses flooding the sewer systems.
“What if one day something horrible escaped into the sewer system?” she said, as the audience snickered.
Everett’s claims are scientifically impossible.
Just days later, the Texas legislature awarded The Heidi Group $1.65 million in taxpayer money for the organization’s “health care services.” Their organization doesn’t provide health care services.
While the group’s website advertises “Helping Texas Women,” further examination reveals their claims to have “programs” lists merely a phone number, the page that offers to help women with pregnancy/infant loss says “Page Coming Soon” and if a woman needs a pregnancy test they have a list of links to crisis pregnancy centers, that counsel women against abortion.
“The Heidi Group exists to ensure that all Texas women have access to quality health care by coordinating services in a statewide network of full-service medical providers,” the website says. It doesn’t explain how this is different from a Google search.
The grant comes out of funding that previously went to Planned Parenthood before Texas politicians kicked them out of the program in 2012.
In an interview with the Texas Observer, Everett admitted that she’ll be forking over a lot of the money to crisis pregnancy centers, which an investigation showed lie to women about the realities of their reproductive health. She assures the Observer that the taxpayer funds will not go to administrative costs at The Heidi Group or the organization’s rent, but it will go to nurses and doctors in rural Texas that urge women against abortions.
“My goal is to reach that little girl in a small county with no hope of having anybody explain her birth control options or have her blood pressure checked,” she said.
The local CVS pharmacy and Walmart often have machines where people can have their blood pressure taken for free. Crisis pregnancy centers in Texas have been caught counseling women to use abstinence only as a birth control method and refusing to dispense contraception.
Full Story Here.
What if the fetuseses join forces with the alligatorses?
huh?
What then?
Alligators, pfffft. It’s the sewer rats you have to worry about!
Ms Everett and the Texas legistlature have taken dishonesty to a new level.
Ice Swimmer:
More than anything, this was 1.65 million dollar snub aimed at Planned Parenthood. Always nice to know just how very screwed up Amerikkan priorities are.
You know, this could be the basis for a very interesting horror movie…
Texas’s sewers, sewage treatment, and/or water treatment are so decrepit nasty things in sewers get into the allegedly potable water? (And therefore also into the wider environment?)
That might explain why they are not worried about Zika, and were the only place in the States to successfully transmit Ebola.
Must be that fiscal conservatism I keep hearing about: Throwing away over a million dollars, just to make an ideological point.
Wow. Even by TX standards this is painfully stupid.
Now…maybe this woman is not aware of this but…there are already lots of embryos and some fetuses in the sewage system. I am about to tell a gross story about miscarriage, so for those not up to reading about such things, just gonna give you a ‘heads up’ , stop reading now.
….
In 2010, I had a miscarriage (at about 20 weeks along). Not a pleasant experience, as you can imagine. To make a long story short, the moment of miscarriage happened when I was on the toilet. In talking to other women, I learned it isn’t actually all that unusual for miscarriages to happen there. (Indeed we’re the lucky ones, I’ve heard horror stories of them happening in public parking lots, at work, etc. I am grateful I was at home, in a private place, not in public.). Who knows how many of these incidents happen every day. Probably quite a few, in places with a large population. And so far as I know, there are more miscarriages than abortions. So, what is Miss Unhinged Texan going to do about that? Oh never mind, I really don’t want to know (as I am sure it’d be nothing good).
Yep, most pregnancies end in early miscarriages by failure to implant. Texas women really should send her their full hygiene products (bonus points if you use a mens cup and collect it in a mason jar)
Someone needs to inform the god lady that we don’t flush aborted fetuses down the toilets.
We use them as bait.
lorn #10
“bait”
Watcha after, bye?
@WMDKitty #5:
Tonight, on SyFy, Sewer Fetuses with HIV vs Croctopus. Hey, it writes itself!
It would also make great name for a college intramural team.
nope. it’s a con.
another way to steal from the public trough, and they know it. it’s nothing more than that, not even a clever con.
but it’s not based on stupidity… just theft.
what a waste. they’re great pickled with onions and peppers.
could be the next chapter in the “It’s alive!” series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Alive_(1974_film)