Pro-Life Organizations
Published by Antigone July 27th, 2008 in Punkass!, Contraception, Fetii, SoapboxAfter many failed attempts on trying to upload images to this blog, I’m just going to assume I have a computer competency level that rivals John McCain, and say screw it. The images that show which pro-life organizations do what is at my Teller of Truths blog, and there will be links going to the relevant graphs. I am sorry if this is somewhat unwieldy for people.
When investigating Pro-Life Organizations, I choose to focus on 6 factors: are they secular or religious, does it appear to be women leading the organization, do they support sexual education, or contraception, or welfare for new mothers, and are they violent or peaceful?
At each link, there is a brief description of how I came to where to classify each organizations. I tried to stick straight to what the organization itself said. For some organizations (like Libertarians for Life) I am sure that do not support welfare, but that organization does not address anything else besides abortion, so I left them at “does not address welfare”.
The information is not surprising for any feminist. The organizations are overwhelmingly run by men, Christian, and anti-contraceptive. Beyond that, most of them are either against comprehensive sexual education, and welfare, or do not address it at all. Thankfully, most of the organizations are not violent, but there are enough that are violent or connected to violence to have a chilling effect.
For my next few blogposts, I’d like to go into some detail to some of these organizations. I plan to cover the most popular one, the national Right to Life Committee, but I will leave up to the readers to decide which organizations they would like some more details on without actually wanting to read their sites.
Thanks for this - it’s really important to know and to have these facts to pull out.
While I think this might be beyond the scope of what you’re doing here (which I think is wonderful, by the way), it would be interesting if you added mentions of stem-cell research and/or the language they use to describe the fertilized egg when talking about both. On the National Right to Life’s website, they use “child/children” 13 times and “baby” 19 times to refer to a zygote, embryo, or fetus when talking about abortion. But they use the word “embryo” whenever they talk about stem-cell research. Their stem-cell research page on their website is entitled “killing human embryos,” not “killing human babies.” So embryos are only children and babies when they’re inside a woman. I wonder if it’s the same with most other pro-life organizations.
I’d like to help you include photos in your blog posts. Send me an email and tell me what platform you’re using (wordpess or other), and I will help you. ENjoying the blog, by the way. Thanks for being informative and entertaining.
ThickRedGlasses-
Perhaps when I go into depth, I can include such things. I’m not going to do it for every site, of course, but the language is something I’d like to analyze.
Jeffrey-
Thank you, but online assistance was already offered, to no avail. I think I need to have someone physically present to help out, or at least on instant messenger.
I kind of already knew that (about the gender, the religion, the anti-contraception etc.) but it’s still always depressing to see it laid out. And frustrating. How much more obvious can an agenda be..?
Well done. I love it when regular folks do this kind of research. I know it’s all available at your other blog, but if you get the technical kinks worked out, please do post it here too.
Democrats For Life is a relatively new thing, and have been at the forefront of trying to push legislation that actually reduces the abortion rate through education and contraception. Unfortunately, they’ve met nothing but resistance from other anti-abortion groups they THOUGHT were allies. Whoops. Hard lessons all around.
This is great research and a real value for people to see the sad truth, that the far-right is very skilled at creating organizations that all think and act alike, to make their small sliver of the electorate seem much more important.
Could this list be any less useful scientifically?
Who are you to parse the language? What are your exact terms/criteria for comparison?
Would you discount “Christian” groups who opposed, say, slavery, or genocide in Africa, or land mines?
The entire thing is biased. To claim that these are “facts” is insane.
Just another feeble lobby in the culture wars.
Yeah, Antigone, that’ll learn you, trying to get “facts” from any source other than “teh Bible.” !!!ur such a loser!!111&
Um, what?
Parse the language? When it says, fairly clearly, that their beliefs are directly from the Bible, or God, that to me says “Christian”. This isn’t parsing the language- I left organizations that might as well been screaming “I’m Christian, I just couldn’t use the word “Christ”". I left it at WHAT THEY SAID. I think I made it fairly clear in my posts why I put in each group what means what.
I would not, and am not, discounting anything the group has to say because they are Christian, or because they do anything. I am merely pointing out what their beliefs are.
I don’t understand how you could say that these aren’t “facts”. If I go to The National Right to Life Committee has ties to Christian organizations, and is lead by a man, this isn’t “biased”- it says on it’s freaking website.
And who am I to parse language? A college graduate of communication, actually.
“And who am I to parse language? A college graduate of communication, actually.”
Ahahahahahahaha.
Thanks for disqualifying yourself immediately. Which community college, by the way?
As for your criteria: what exactly does “ties to a religious organization mean?” What are the standards you use to define and qualify those ties? Is it having religious members? Receiving money from religious people? Religious entities? Moral (ahem) support?
This a a scorecard to underscore a biased POV for biased actors. Any talk of facts is pure dissembling.
And further, what is the point of the survey if not to discount organizations who support an end to abortion by pointing out there religious affiliation?
I notice you left out many other potential criteria here, and have instead focused in on a dim set meant to inflame preconceived notions.
Didn’t they teach you about propaganda in your Media Literacy 101 class?
It would no doubt be very wrong of me to use my powers as an admin to replace the above post with a video of the Hypnotoad. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Um, did you read the post? The post where I say “Ties to Christianity means that they have three articles written from a Christian perspective and/or five links to Christian groups?”
And, why the hate against communication? Combined with my other focus- political science, it is a great for what I’m going into (law school).
The point of the survey is to demonstrate possible motivations for being anti-abortion. I do not discount “pro-life” organization because they are Christian- I discount them because I believe they are wrong.
What other potential criteria would you have me put? When I announced I was going to investigate pro-life groups, where were you then?
And…you know, fuck it. I think Hypnotoad would actually be a better use of comment space.
Aw, someone just took a logic class! Learned about fallacies and everything! Your daddy must be so proud. Except for the fact that you don’t seem to have actually LEARNED anything…either that or you’re deliberately misusing your knowledge of fallacies and trying to use the persuasive power of fallacies to your own advantage.
Beets, you, and people like you, are the reason why people think “teh internets is stupid”. Why, do you ask? Shall I support my argument? Sure, why not!
Antigone has done what we call a “case study”, or in this instance a series of case studies. She has compiled demographic data about the organizations AS THEY SELF-REPORTED ON THEIR OWN SITE. She explains her exact definitions and methods for classification, and then reports the factors she studies, and her conclusions. In other words, the vast majority of what she’s done is REPORT THE FACTS of these organizations AS THEY SELF-REPORTED THEM, in convenient tabular form, so everyone can compare the results.
Let’s review, and break down EXACTLY where and why you are being either ignorant or deliberately deceptive (and yes, this is what we call “a correct use of fallacies”):
“AD HOMINEM ATTACK: attacking the personal instead of the argument
– Uhm, it’s not like this is being submitted to a peer-reviewed academic journal. And it’s certainly more scientific than any Internet poll/survey ever conducted, ever.
– First of all, anyone can parse language however they want. Now, if you are trying to say she has no authority to be believed, well, as she explaines (later), she’s a graduate of communication. And, again as she said, she didn’t “parse the language”, so this isn’t the vague deceptive tactic you’re implying. (And, might I add, if you want to see if she was misinterpreting, you could go check it out yourself and see if you disagree and the organization isn’t really “Christian” — oh wait, you don’t go check out ANYTHING. You just assume. My bad.)
– This ad hominem is quite obvious and, frankly, a low blow. “College graduate” almost always means “post-bachelor’s”, and even if it WAS a community college, that doesn’t make the education lower quality, or make her less qualified to evaluate it. Especially ironic coming from someone who mixes up all their (there/their/they’re)s, indicating that you have little to NO college, or if you are, you’re not one to be pointing fingers.
“Didn’t they teach you about propaganda in your Media Literacy 101 class?”
STRAW MAN: to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent’s actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent
– Nowhere did Antigone say that Christian groups should be discounted, nor did she EVER say that their religious affiliation didn’t interest her. Pointing out that most anti-abortion groups are Christian or Christian-affiliated does help with the argument that such groups should not be permitted to make their religious beliefs into law…separation of church and state and all that.
– Actually, one purpose of this was to see, SCIENTIFICALLY, if the “suspicions” and “preconcieved notions” had basis in fact and evidence to support it. They do! Yay!
As for “many other potential criteria”, you mention only two (and you don’t mention why they would matter, whereas religious affiliation DOES matter in church-and-state arguments) and I suspect looking for corporate or hate-group connections would yield little results. You are welcome to check that out, though even if you did I don’t see how that would affect the conclusions she (and most other feminists, progressives, and liberals) come to. (I am laughing to myself at the thought of you actually bothering to follow up on this. I am so naive sometimes!)
– It’s quite funny that you’re claims of a straw main contain, in fact, a straw man. First of all, what she’s saying isn’t a straw man (see definition above) but could possibly be argued as irrelevant or not connected (another fallacy, perhaps a red herring). Second, she does not say Christians don’t support charities and the poor. And seeing if the groups who advocate against abortion are willing to pay support for the resulting unwanted children that will be born to unprepared mothers is absolutely relevant to her argument. The fastest way to throw yourself into poverty or live on charity is having a child. They’re expensive. Many women who get abortions get them because they know they would not be able to financially support their children; the resulting question is, are you willing to provide something for women to support their children with, so they can have them (without ruining their lives)? It’s really not all that disconnected.
RED HERRING: an argument, given in response to another argument, which does not address the original issue
I am pro life/anti-abortion but I find this post interesting because I value information and making informed decisions on who to support. Just because I’m pro life doesn’t mean I automatically support A organization over B organization. There are lots of factors which you are trying to bring to light here, which is good. I am sorry that someone attacked Antigone and asked which “community college” they went to — it’s not cool to say that someone who attends community college (not saying that Antigone did) is somehow less able to think and reason or understand material. We have super smart people in various schools and super smart people who never went to college at all; plus dumb people who are in an Ivy League school. It’s unfair to judge based on that criteria and to try and bring a a person’s argument down by attacking their schooling.
Pro life people differ as much as Christians do (look at how many denominations there are, some of which are fine with abortion — like the Methodists.)