Some abortion foes shifting focus...

[bliss_eternal]

Some abortion foes shifting focus
Frustrated by failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, activists look to assistance

By Jacqueline L. Salmon

updated 1 hour, 52 minutes ago
Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Their efforts, they said, reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama's victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions. Although the activists insist that they are not retreating from their belief that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed, they argue that a more practical alternative is to try to reduce abortions through other means.

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excerpt from:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27778146

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. Well, at least they seem to be doing something useful.

However, too often these efforts revert back to the usual attempts to lie to and mislead women, with the concommitant efforts to deny women information and contraception.

[bliss_eternal]

2. I don't trust them...

...as you state, they have a long history of misleading women and attempting to coerce them with strong arm tactics and lies.
These groups almost always do whatever it takes to preserve the fetus, even if it means blatant disrespect and abuse of the woman.

The last time they said they were going to "help" women--crops of those phony clinics popped up. The one's that claim they are "family planning" but they deny birth control to women, and morning after contraception. They offer pregnancy testing, but lie about how many weeks the pregnacy has advanced--so women have no choice.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. The Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Phoenix gave $100k to Prop 102

Prop 102 was Arizona's anti-gay marriage initiative. What stopping gay marriage has to do with stopping abortion I cannot fathom but I'm sure it fits in with the organization's overall mission of promoting "Christian values". OTOH, I guess I should be happy that they had $100k less to devote to lying to women.

[iverglas]

4. if you want to see some background to this

They realized some time ago that "abortion is evil!" really wasn't working with women, who are perfectly capable of making our own judgments, and ignored them. So they went to work on "Abortion hurts women!" and its various tentacles.


http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9804/articles/swope.html

"Abortion: A Failure to Communicate" (1998)

Hold your nose before clicking.

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. (The distinction between "right brain" and "left brain" activity may be physiologically oversimplified or even wrong, but it remains useful as a shorthand description of different ways of thinking.)

The right side of the brain is thought to control the emotional, intuitive, creative aspect of the person. Whereas most research involves analytic, rational questions and thus draws responses primarily from the left side of the brain, "right brain" research aims to uncover the underlying emotional reasons why we make particular decisions or hold certain beliefs. Such an approach has obvious applications to an issue such as abortion, as a woman in the grips of a crisis pregnancy certainly does not resolve this issue in a cold, logical, "left-brain" manner.

and more.

The way to control women is to appeal to our illogical feminine selves, not our real "brains".

[ismnotwasm]

5. That's a convoluted mess

The author must have accidentally used "choose abortion" He said "choose"

What part of women have a ethical, moral and so far legal choice to keep or terminate a pregnancy is not getting through to these people? I'm done arguing about what a fetus is or isn't, other than, What it isn't, is going to grow in my body in the unlikely event of a pregnancy. Period.

Women certainly can and have resolve an unwanted pregnancy from a "cold, logical "left brained" manner. Not every woman has the same "emotional" response, but it's a private medical decision, one that keeps getting trotted out in the media like a performing poodle, thanks to these strange and disturbed people. It would be embarrassing if it wasn't so dangerous.

What a bunch of illogical assumptions about women from what was that, "sophisticated research"? Ugh.

[iverglas]

6. there's a rather interesting counterpart, though

When the question of abortion legality is framed as agree/disagree with the statement the decision should be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor, her family, her conscience and her God, a striking majority agree.

That's kinda right-brained: getting respondents to see women as people with families and consciences (and gods, if it makes ya happy) who are just like "us".

The only reference I find to that survey on the net just now is Naomi Wolff's putrid piece from 1995:

www.gateway.org/content/pdf/evil_nec.pdf

Look at what Americans themselves say. When a recent Newsweek poll asked about support for abortion using the rare phrasing, "It's a matter between a woman, her doctor, her family, her conscience and her God," a remarkable 72 percent of the respondents called that formulation "about right." This represents a gain of thirty points over the abortion rights support registered in the latest Gallup poll, which asked about abortion without using the words "God" or "conscience."

When participants in the Gallup poll were asked if they supported abortion "under any circumstances" only 32 percent agreed; only 9 percent more supported it under "most" circumstances. Clearly, abortion rights are safest when we are we are willing to submit them to a morality beyond just our bodies and our selves.

Of course I disagree entirely with Wolff's analysis of that. Abortion rights are safest when everyone just recognizes, duh, that women are people. Sometimes the point has to be hammered home though.

Btw, that phrasing was what President Clinton used in vetoing a "partial-birth abortion" bill.

http://www.pregnantpause.org/lex/partveto.htm

He's a bit of a master of the lingo. ;)

[ismnotwasm]

7. Anymore, that just pisses me off

I used to think that kind wording was a kind of positive, a broad-based pragmatic reaching out to people of faith, and I really don't have a problem with most people of faith.

I don't believe in deities. I don't have to, I don't want to, and it has nothing to do with how I'd feel about terminating a pregnancy. It should have nothing to do with law.

Naomi Wolff can kiss my ass. I read a much better essay a while back that said basically, (using bigger words than I usually do) yes we're dealing with human DNA, and yes it's that the death of that same human DNA, but not only is it the the woman's business what to do with it, it's her total inherent responsibility to decide what to do with it. And yes, it's power over life or death---If we must be dramatic, and there seems to be this driving need for histrionic drama when dealing with abortion.

(So's chemotherapy. Killing human DNA cancer cells is a good thing. I can hear it now, how dare I compare a fetus to a cancer but fuck it. In my case, a pregnancy could kill me. Cancer could kill me. There isn't much of a difference. I'm really really sick of my rights being challenged.)

In this other essay, choice is neither "good" nor "evil" but a matter of Maternal Moral Authority.(I love that phrase) Total body autonomy. Not someone else's god, not the law, not tired old male originated ethics, not the sperm donor. Her body. Her decision. Her right. End of story.