Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion

[flvegan]

The Anti-Choice Movement's Bag of Dirty Tricks

By Jeanine Plant, AlterNet. Posted November 1, 2007.

The documentary Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion offers a tough lesson: that rational, scientific appeals pale in comparison to the blood-and-guts emotionality of the anti-choice movement.

Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion, the recent documentary by Stephen Fell and Will Thompson, is an eye-opening, must-see portrait of the pro-life movement's win-at-all-costs philosophy. It goes beyond the movement's robotic way of staying on-message and reveals anti-choicers' unrepentant, and often subtle, employment of dirty tricks. What makes these tricks so disturbing -- and, arguably, effective -- is that most of them aren't coming from extremists perpetuating bald-faced lies. Instead, it's the reasonable-seeming, public-relations-type woman who pushes misinformation about a link between abortion and breast cancer. It's the young student with a Northface backpack who displays horrifying visuals of aborted fetuses on university campuses. It's the nonthreatening, formerly pro-choice 19-year-old who shares her own heartbreaking abortion story.

In its even-handed depiction of the movement's moderates and extremists, this film offers one bitter-pill lesson: appeals to science and reason, however ethical, simply do not influence the masses as well as blood-and-guts emotionality. For example, in response to anti-choice images of broken fetal arms strewn in blood, reproductive justice activists show a wire hanger next to a smiling picture of Joan Crawford. This comes across as sterile, diminutive and polite. By contrast, a no-holds-barred approach would be an image of a woman who had died during a back-alley abortion. A corpse.

Much more at link:
http://www.alternet.org/story/66453/

[Lord Helmet]

1. the are trying to make abortions impossible to get

since they know they aren't going to get that constitutional amendment banning abortions

[flamingyouth]

2. Thanks for posting this.

The whole article is excellent, but this paragraph is key, IMO:

The issue of birth control gets at the heart of another vexing issue, though. As reproductive justice activists fight to defend a woman's right to privacy, they're also working to protect a woman's right to access to birth control because they generally don't want women to have to resort to abortion either. Abortion typically being the last resort, a woman who has one is likely not a selfish slut seeking convenience. But that is just what some of these characters will have you believe. Especially the kind of person who holds up the despicable sign "God Hates You The Way You Are: Sodomites, Abortionists, Drunkards," for example, at the 2004 March for Women's Lives. So much for the feigned sympathy of a 13-year-old victim of rape, who, according to deluded anti-choice activists, was probably asking for it.

[Ilsa]

5. And they'd love finish the abortion fight so they can attack

birth control next. Many see contraception as abortion.

Screw them.

[flamingyouth]

6. Exactly.

"The Pill is an abortifacient" is a big meme now too. Argh alert: http://www.prolife.com/BIRTHCNT.html

Yes, brought to you from the same people who don't see fit to fund health care for POST-BORN children. :mad:

[SemiCharmedQuark]

10. I was shocked how many students in my class have no clue about contraception

[NMDemDist2]

3. woman who use brith control will have pregnancies anyway, here's the chart of failure rates

Actual vs. Theoretical Failure Rates for Various Birth Control Methods

Method Actual Failure Theoretical Failure Rate

Chance 85% 85%

Spermicides only 21% 3%

Periodic Abstinence 20% 2 - 9%

Withdrawal 18% 4%
(pulling out)

Cervical Cap 18% 6%

Diaphragm 18% 6%

Condom 12% 2%

IUD 3% 0.8 - 2%

Oral Contraceptive Pill 3% 0.1%

Injected Depo-Provera 0.3% 0.3%

Female Sterilization 0.4% 0.2%
(Tubal Ligation)

Male Sterilization 0.2% 0.1%
(Vasectomy)

Levonorgestrel Implants 0.04% 0.04%
(Norplant)

[TheMadMonk]

11. And if you mix your methods, the failure rate drops dramatically.

The worst two, spermicide + abstinence, together have an (in practice) failure rate of (0.20 * 0.21) = 0.042 = 4%.

A condom + diaphragm nets just fractionally worse than 2%

Pill + condom is 0.36 percent.


Oh and one very effective method doesn't seem to be getting much of a look in:- Frequent hot baths. Sperm develops best at a temperature a couple of degrees lower than normal body temperature, which is why the testicles hang outside the body.

Cooking one's luv spuds at temperatures in excess of 40 degrees C won't hurt the machinery, but kills new sperm as they are formed.

[Zodiak]

4. Show them a picture of Gerri Santoro

If they want to go with the guttural emotional pictures.

Because that is the copnsequence of their anti-choice hatred.

I won't post the picture directly because of nudity.

http://www.sapphireblue.com/25years/

But tell me what stirs more emotion....a cut up fetus (which looks like a neonate mouse), or this poor woman who died alone.

[Scout]

8. those assholes think and say that Gerri deserved what happened to her n/t

[Zodiak]

9. They are assholes, so it is par for the course

No one deserves to die alone with shame because their government doesn't acknowledge the right they have over their own bodies.

[LeftyMom]

7. They hate women and they hate sex. That's all.