[identity profile] lynn82md.livejournal.com
The campaign, masterminded by 26-year-old anti-abortion crusader and “proud millennial” David Daleiden, is meant to let us in on the fact that abortion is disgusting.

When asked, in an interview with the National Review, what one question he would ask Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, Daleiden replied, “I would ask her if she knows abortion the way Planned Parenthood providers know abortion.” Proud millennial David Daleiden wants to make sure that 57-year-old Cecile Richards, who has given birth to three children and publicly discussed her own abortion, really understands what abortion is.

Daleiden is enacting a very old strategy, akin to standing outside a clinic with a sign informing women that their unborn babies have fingerprints at nine weeks’ gestation. This approach has taken on new life in recent years, as improving ultrasound technology has offered an ever-sharper view of fetal development, leading those in both the anti-abortion and the reproductive-rights movements to argue that a public, moral, and rhetorical reckoning with the carnal implications of abortion is necessary.

The videos are likely to have an impact: not on public opinion about abortion, which rarely changes meaningfully, but perhaps on Planned Parenthood’s funding, and almost certainly on laws made by state legislatures in the parts of America where abortion has already become so inaccessible — thanks to elaborate facility requirements, waiting periods, parental-consent-and-notification laws, earlier gestational cutoffs, and a dwindling number of providers — that it might as well be illegal.

But as a broader strategy, the notion that educating women in the grotesqueries of termination will be a game-changer is absurd. As Richards could tell Daleiden if he asked her his question, women already know what abortion is. We know more about blood, innards, fetuses, and the babies they may become — in short, about life in reproductive bodies — than anti-abortion activists seem to understand.


Disclaimer: This is a snippet from the article. It's not the beginning of the article.
[identity profile] lynn82md.livejournal.com
Why do male pro-lifers speak their minds while pro-choice guys stay silent? Hugh Ryan on the fight's glaring gender divide—and why men are turning against abortion rights in droves.

A couple snippets from the article that I liked:
Pro-choice activists argue that there’s more to the issue than one poll, however. Ted Miller, Communications Director at NARAL Pro-Choice America, points to South Dakota. When a legislative ban on abortions was defeated in 2006, anti-abortion activists claimed that a similar bill, with exceptions for rape and incest, would pass in the next legislative cycle. In 2008, the bill, now with exceptions, was handily defeated again, and both pre- and post-polling showed men and women equally against it.
Not to mention, several states that had a bill which would've given fertilized eggs personhood was defeated in several states in the 2008 election.

The truth of the matter is that women have always and will always make decisions about whether or not to have children, regardless of what their parents, Congress, or Tim Tebow have to say about it. But without vocal support—from men and women—procedures will become more difficult to get, and more dangerous for the women who need them. Having seen the alternative, I know which side I stand on.
Damn right!!!

I want to remark on one thing, but I didn't make a snippet about it. I think when it comes to polls, people (both and women) think that in order to be pro-choice...you have to have an abortion and you have to love it. Being a former pro-lifer, I used to have that misconception myself. To add to that, it seems that people who aren't active in the abortion debate or are new to it don't realize there's more to being pro-choice than just supporting abortion. You defend reproductive rights for both men and women. As I have for our avatars on this community:

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