NPR "opinion piece" by pro-life

[cap]

states that there are many educated people who support the pro-life movement.

That it was a key issue in the 04 election.

That many people who hold ordinarily pro-left let abortion be the only issue. Ie, gun control advocates, environmental advocates.

This women claims to be one of the early feminists and originally pro-choice but has changed her mind.

Does anybody know any lefties who changed their vote because of the abortion issue?

I think NPR just aired a propaganda piece for the pro-choice group -- a piece they think will fragment the left. I dont think it is even a valid opinion piece.

Would like to double check with anyone on these boards?

[goddess40]

1. If they voted for bush over the abortion issue they aren't pro-life

they're just anti-choice and their is a HUGE difference.

War, death penalty and denying medical care are all anti-life stances. So is not paying a living wage.

[all.of.me]

3. Amen to that!!

You said it beautifully! When I explain this to people, they just blankly stare at me. If someone believes in the war, or any war, and then say they are pro-life, I will call them a hypocrite. But a lot of people don't equate the two....

[Inland]

13. Yes, and that's how Clinton et al were always prochoice and prolife

by providing options in support for women who chose to bear children.

All Bush is going to do is take the choices and make one punishable with a prison term.

[mopinko]

2. just caught the end of the piece

but it is just one more of the fundie bits that have crept in to the point that i am about ready to pull my membership.
on jan 7 i heard about 60 seconds on the electoral challenge, followed by 5 minutes on the major religions interpretation of the tsunami, ie, did god mean to kill those people or what? nowhere did they mention cramming jesus down starving peoples throats.
i don't know anyone who has ever baked down, except women who have had abortions and who later absorbed the venom that these people spew.
:puke:

[noamnety]

4. I heard that also

The woman on there conveniently forgot to mention abortions going down under Clinton, up under Bush. I wonder what they think they are voting for, exactly - looks to me like they are voting for more abortions.

They said tomorrow they were airing an opposing piece.

[Harksaw]

5. They said they would air a similar piece by a pro-choicer tomorrow.

Or was I listening to an old recording? Does anyone have a transcript of the pro-choice rebuttal?

[REP]

6. There's a Reason They're Called "Pro-Lie"

She's an "early feminist" and I'm Marie of Rumania. Easy to claim; impossible to prove, just like so many pro-lie talking points.

[iverglas]

7. ah, Frederica Mathewes-Green

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4463538

January 24, 2005 · In the first of two commentaries about abortion laws in America, commentator Frederica Mathewes-Green weighs in on the change she hopes to see during the next four years of the Bush administration. She also says that Democrats would be wise to learn who pro-lifers really are. She is the author of Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion.

She's a vicious manipulator in antelic clothing, long known to anyone who's discussed abortion on the net over the years.

http://www.frederica.com/

Her most famous quote:

http://www.frederica.com/pro-life/pbeyond.html

The prevalence of this pro-choice ambivalence may be best illustrated by the travels of an analogy I wrote a few years ago: "There is tremendous sadness, loneliness in the cry, A woman's right to choose.' No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg."

But she is the new face, the "second wave", of the anti-choice campaign. "Abortion is murder" didn't work. Abortion was still legal. Women were still choosing abortion. So they remade themselves, from misogynist hate-mongers to warm fuzzy women-lovers.

Read all about it here: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9804/articles/swope.html
"Abortion: A Failure to Communicate" (1998)

For twenty-five years the pro-life movement has stood up to defend perhaps the most crucial principle in any civilized society, namely, the sanctity and value of every human life. However, neither the profundity and scale of the cause, nor the integrity of those who work to support it, necessarily translates into effective action. Recent research on the psychology of pro-choice women offers insight into why the pro-life movement has not been as effective as it might have been in persuading women to choose life; it also offers opportunities to improve dramatically the scope and influence of the pro-life message, particularly among women of childbearing age.

This research suggests that modern American women of childbearing age do not view the abortion issue within the same moral framework as those of us who are pro-life activists. Our message is not being well-received by this audience because we have made the error of assuming that women, especially those facing the trauma of an unplanned pregnancy, will respond to principles we see as self-evident within our own moral framework, and we have presented our arguments accordingly. This is a miscalculation that has fatally handicapped the pro-life cause. While we may not agree with how women currently evaluate this issue, the importance of our mission and the imperative to be effective demand that we listen, that we understand, and that we respond to the actual concerns of women who are most likely to choose abortion.

The importance of a new approach became clear from the results of sophisticated research pioneered by the Caring Foundation, a group that presents the pro-life message to the public via television. This group has been able to tap into some of the most advanced psychological research available today, so-called "right brain" research. ...

In other words, they moved from denouncing to manipulating. The article goes on to describe some of the anti-choice TV commercials you might have seen in recent years.

The message is essentially that abortion is "anti-woman". This isn't a message that will necessarily help them get abortion outlawed (since when did something being anti-woman mean it got outlawed, eh?). But it has been widely used by them to push for "informed consent" laws, the kind that require women to be told all sorts of irrelevant and frequently false information about the effects of abortion, for the plain purpose of interfering with women's access to abortion services. And of course it allows the great lumpen anti-choice population to give themselves hugs for doing such good work for women, rather than smiting themselves for being hateful oppressors.

Read up on Frederica, and know thine enemy.

[iverglas]

15. read up, folks

This is a master demagogue at work.

http://www.incommunion.org/articles/older-issues/the-bitter-price-of-choice

When I was in college the bumper sticker on my car read "Don.t labor under a misconception - legalize abortion." I was one of a handful of feminists on my campus, back in the days when we were jeered at as "bra-burning women's libbers." As we struggled against a hazy sea of sexism, abortion rights was a visible banner, a concrete, measurable goal. Though our other foes were elusive, within the fragile boundary of our skin, at least, we would be sovereign. What could be more personal? How could any woman oppose it? I oppose it now. It has been a slow process, my path from a pro-choice to a pro-life position, and I know that unintended pregnancy raises devastating problems. But I can no longer avoid the realization that legalizing abortion was the wrong solution; we have let in a Trojan Horse whose hidden betrayal we've just begun to see.

Ah yes -- legalizing abortion was the wrong solution to some problem that it was never meant to solve.

A woman with an unplanned pregnancy faces more than "inconvenience"; many adversities, financial and social, at school, at work, and at home confront her. Our mistake was in looking at these problems and deciding that the fault lay with the woman, that she should be the one to change. We focused on her swelling belly, not the pressures that made her so desperate. We advised her, "Go have this operation and you'll fit right in."

If that was what Freddy and her gang were telling women, they were as vicious then as they are now, and not feminists or "women's libbers" by any stretch of the imagination. But somehow, methinks that Freddy's memory of what her friends were saying is a bit, hm, dim.

Abortion has become the accepted way of dealing with unplanned pregnancies, and women who make another choice are viewed as odd, backward, and selfish. ...

And again ... maybe Freddy needs some new friends. Or enemies. Those straw ones are just ugly.

Harping on the discomforts of pregnancy treats women as weak, incompetent; yet we are uniquely equipped for this role, and strong enough to do much harder things than this. Every woman need not bear a child, but every woman should feel proud kinship in the earthy, elemental beauty of birth. To hold it in contempt is to reject our distinctive power, "our bodies, ourselves." ...

Gosh, I only harp on those "discomforts of pregnancy" (things like, oh, death) when someone like her is trying to force other women to endure them. If she'd shut up, I'd have nothing to say at all.

Until that time, legal abortion invites us to go on doing it, 4,500 times a day. ...

Yup, and legal adultery invites us to go on doing it even more times a day; and I could of course go on.

This is indeed one of the most deceitful and disgusting human beings you will ever encounter. So don't miss the opportunity to immerse yourself in the slime and get to know how it feels.

[MemphisTiger]

8. Anyone who claims they voted republican due to abortion

is stupid or lying. Bush has said that ending abortion is not at the top of his agenda. Since Roe v. Wade, there have been many republican administration that could have done away with abortion, but it has never been tried except for late-term. Bush even has a republican house and senate, but he still won't try. Bush is dangling a carrot in front of these one-issue voters and will never deliver. For the record, I am pro-life.

[cap]

9. can we hold NPR accountable for publicizing propaganda...

not an opinion piece but pieces that have out and out falsehoods in them.

I wouldn't care if they had a pro-life person argue for a pro-life position ... that's freedom of speech and should not be denied.

But to insist that there is a significant number of left-wing people who are pro-life is simply not true. And to broadcast a person who is trying to say that this is so is a violation of FCC regulations about accuracy in the media. (see the case of the reporters suing FOX for insisting on the broadcast of inaccurate information).

[MemphisTiger]

10. You could sue, but you would be no better than the repubs

The idea of fact can be a matter of opinion. If you don't share his opinion, you try to run down the organization. That's not what democrats are about. People can smell BS a mile away. Let them take a big sniff and make up their own mind.

[Inland]

11. Woman surveyed invitees to her dinner party. Big frick deal.

But you are right, it is a piece on fragmenting the left after it is shown how divided the conservatives are on abortion.

[saltpoint]

12. Perhaps that woman could explain to the many thousands --

-- of Iraqi survivors of Bush's shock-and-awe bombings the virtues of a pro-life movement.

I'd pay good money to watch that project.

[noamnety]

14. I didn't realize she was a regular commentator on NPR. Ugh.

:puke:

She also opposes birth control. What a surprise! They seriously need to just rename themselves anti-choice.

"Contraception fails to make everything dandy, because it is a technological solution for an emotional problem."

If I don't want to have kids, I have an emotional problem?


"Living without abortion means restoring that sexual balance-of-power, with respect for women's need for commitment and security--in short, abstinence before and fidelity within marriage."

[mdguss]

16. I have a college degree:

I support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, I support the second amendment, and I voted for Kerry. I actually think Kerry is as pro-life as the Democratic Party is going to get for a while. At least he expressed his personal opposition to abortion.

[Beaverhausen]

17. And you have a personal opposition to abortion too. That's fine

but not all americans believe the same things you believe.

You have every right to have your opinion. So does everyone else.
That is why it is called CHOICE.

If you find yourself faced with an unwanted pregnancy it is your choice how to proceed with it. No one elses.

Kindly allow others the same choice.