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Telling the truth about abortion? That’s our job

Dec 22, 2014

 

By Dave Andrusko

Editor’s note. We are rapidly approaching the 42nd anniversary of the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. This month we are re-running posts from past editions of NRL News and NRL News Today. In January we will begin posting new stories about this tragedy. The following was written in 2013 as a response to a highly sympathetic [to Roe] January 21 editorial in USA Today and a piece by Sydney Lupkin for ABC News.

2013-nrlc-logoWhat does the editorial board of USA Today get right? Easier to start with what it got wrong.

It sounds like such inside baseball to call abortion “a wedge issue in most political campaigns and in the Supreme Court.” In fact, those who employ such terminology are just wrapping cynicism up in pretend sophistication.

Opponents of Roe don’t roll out their opposition to “distract from important issues.” We believe abortion is the most important social justice issue of our day. And since it is the Supreme Court that nationalized the issue 40 years ago, it is only the Supreme Court can allow the issue to be fully debated by the people in the 50 state legislatures by overturning Roe.

There are not “thousands of people” coming to Washington, DC. Friday. There is no hard and fast count but the line of people marching down the streets goes on and on and on and on. You could say 75,000, and with equal sincerity you could say 200,000. Point is there will be a massive number of people, most of whom are young, in our nation’s capital.

True, opinion polls have not changed much; what movement there has been is clearly in the direction of life, particularly among young people. But if abortion is as common as abortion advocates say, why isn’t abortion more accepted? Why is it not well known that a majority says abortion should be legal only for the “hard cases” and that there is an overwhelming opposition to abortion used as a form of birth control?

USA Today happily announces that the chances that abortion will be “outlawed” are “close to nil,” but laments “the potential that abortion could become a right without meaning for many.” That is shorthand for legislation that says states won’t fund abortions; states will direct family planning dollars to centers that provide life-affirming options; states that give women one last chance to see the baby they are about to abort; and states may require a day or three to think about such a life-and-death decision.

A better way of describing those requirements are they ensure abortion is an informed decision, the last thing abortionists want.

It takes you about, maybe four seconds to figure out that ABC News’ Sydney Lupkin is writing a piece indistinguishable from a press release from NARAL. 247 words into the story, we’ve already read about toxic oil, turpentine, and coat hangers. That’s even-handed.

It gets better, check that, worse. All that pro-lifers who attempt to dissuade women from aborting do is yell at them. Not a syllable about Pregnancy Centers which outnumber abortion clinics and the act of gentle, friendly persuasion. To do so would mess up the story line.

And referring to the cost of abortion, we’re told (by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute), “If you adjust for inflation, that isn’t actually much of an increase over the last couple of decades.” Nothing about how huge a profit center abortion is for Planned Parenthood; or how it requires that each affiliate have a clinic that performs abortion; or how nearly one in nine women walking in the doors of a PPFA clinic has an abortion. Nope, just how adjusting for inflation, abortion is practically free—if you believe PPFA’s propagandists.

The story ends with a perverse hope—that is, hope that abortion will be normalized by campaigns such as the Advocates for Youth’s “1 in 3 campaign” in which women “share” their abortion stories.

So, not to belabor the obvious, we’ve not seen, nor will we see over the next few days stories that tell the truth about abortion; the truth about pro-lifers; or the truth that abortion has been an unmitigated disaster for women and unborn children.

That’s our job.

Categories: NRLC