Columnist Offers Solution to Divorce: “Wedlease”

Last Sunday a guest column appeared in the Washington Post advocating “term marriages” or “wedleases”—temporary marriages that would end after a predetermined number of years.

The column claims this could reduce divorce. In the column, the author points out how common divorce has become in recent years, and asks the question, “Why doesn’t society make the legal structure of marriage more congruent to our behavior” by legalizing temporary marriages? He even goes so far as to claim when a temporary “wedlease” expires, the husband and wife could renew their marriage “lease” or go on about their separate lives as simply “as vacating a rental unit.”

The idea sounds so far-fetched that you would almost think the column was satire. The truth is, however, with more couples trying “open” marriages and many states choosing to define marriage as something other than the union of one man to one woman for a lifetime, it’s worth taking time to explain why “wedleases” simply would not work. (more…)

Columnist Asks if “Another Gosnell” Operating in Delaware

In a column published by the Washington Post last Friday, Kirsten Powers asked whether a Planned Parenthood clinic in Delaware has been secretly operating under Kermit Gosnell-like conditions.

Powers recently helped bring media attention to Gosnell’s trial. Gosnell was convicted earlier this year of murdering babies born alive following abortion procedures. The grand jury report in his case cited horrific conditions–including blood-stained medical records, insufficiently-trained staff members, and a complete lack of organization–at Gosnell’s clinic.

Powers’ most recent column tells about three whistleblowers who came forward recently from a Delaware abortion clinic, saying,

“[T]wo former Planned Parenthood nurses – Joyce Vasikonis and Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich – have been ringing alarm bells since April about the ‘meat-market-style, assembly-line abortions,’ they witnessed at the Delaware clinic. Moreover, they have complained of lax regulation and a lack of government oversight of abortion clinics in Delaware.

“This week they were joined by Melody Meanor, a former health-care manager at Planned Parenthood of Delaware. Meanor testified that she felt compelled to come forward because she was ‘offended when Planned Parenthood of Delaware attempted to discredit the [prior] testimony’ of Mitchell-Werbrich and Vasikonis who described what she too had witnessed.”

Among other things, the three women say Planned Parenthood’s Delaware clinic was disorganized and allowed staff to perform serious medical procedures without sufficient training. Mitchell-Werbrich specifically said she saw one abortion doctor “slapping a patient,” and placing patients on unwashed operating room tables.

Many abortion advocates have claimed Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic was an outlier, and that most clinics are well-maintained. However, between the testimony of these three women; the closure of a North Carolina abortion clinic last week for some two dozen health violations; and recent stories out of Texas of an abortion doctor who allegedly killed infants born alive; one has to wonder whether Gosnell-like abortion clinics are far more common than many would have us believe.

NC Abortion Clinic Closed Due to Filthy Conditions

According to LifeNews.com, the  North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has suspended the license of an abortion clinic in Asheville, NC, due to two dozen serious health and safety violations.

According to a press release from North Carolina’s DHHS, “Inspectors from Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR) found the [abortion] facility failed to comply with 23 separate rules.” Additionally, the press release noted the the abortion clinic:

“Failed to maintain anesthesia (nitrous oxide gas) delivery systems in good working condition, with torn masks and tubing held together with tape. This could lead to patients not receiving the intended dosage and risk patients not being fully sedated during surgical procedures, leading to pain and physical harm.

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