By Dave Andrusko
A brief but sincere thank you to those kind enough to take the extra step to email me for writing “How one pro-abortionist reported on NRL 2017.”
As promised I’m again addressing Amy Littlefield’s post for Rewire, a pro-abortion site. But I’d like to first say a few words about Samantha Lachman’s “Here’s How The Anti-Abortion Movement Plans To Modernize Its Approach.”
Lachman’s analysis is necessarily a bit crimped since it is focused on one meeting back in January of one set of pro-life activists. But here is what she is right about even if (like Littlefield) she misinterprets what it means.
She is right that pro-lifers are embracing social media with a passion. As Rai Rojas, NRLC’s director of Latino Outreach , shrewdly observed in one of his multiple NRL 2017 workshops, pro-abortionists got there first. But pro-lifers, while playing catch up, are catching up in a hurry.
As she does often in her piece, Lachman poses a kind of dualism in which while everything pro-lifers do is still wrong, it’s not quite as bad as what had happened previously. Thus she (completely incorrectly) paraphrases what one speaker suggested –that “the movement’s traditional intimidation tactics didn’t achieve its ends”–to get to a discussion of what the discussion was really about–all the many, many women-helping centers that were there from the beginning but which are now even larger in number and more sophisticated in their outreach to abortion-minded women.
She also has a section headlined, “Create An Alternative Media Universe.” But this didn’t begin day before yesterday. Pro-lifers have been doing that since the 1960s. Only in those days our “media” was essentially mimeographed one-sheeters. Now the pro-life media outreach is incredibly sophisticated–as anyone who attended any of a dozen workshops at NRL 2017 can attest.
Back to a few closing comments about Littlefield. Referring to General Session speaker David Daleiden, the founder of the Center for Medical Progress, she wrote, “His words reflected a general tenor of anti-journalism throughout the conference, as speaker after speaker condemned and mocked outlets from the New York Times to the Washington Post to CNN.”
I mean, really, what can you say? These “outlets” loathe the Movement, never missing a chance to belittle and demean and trivialize what we do. It is not mindless “anti-journalism” to see that these same “outlets” have dedicated themselves to bringing down the pro-life Trump Administration in an orchestration series of ceaseless attacks.
(What preceded, triggered her characterization? “’Rewire is part of the American Pravda,’ Daleiden said, referring to the Russian newspaper that was once the official paper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ‘You guys are very fake news. I’m not going to talk to Rewire.’” So, it’s perhaps one thing to “condemn” or “mock” the New York Times, but to liken Rewire to Pravda–well, that’s going too far.)
One other quick point about Littlefield’s “The Anti-Choice Embrace of Trump Is Complete: Dispatch From the National Right to Life Convention.” These are probably not Littlefield’s words, but the caption under the first photograph reads, “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was among several state anti-choice politicians who appeared at the convention to advertise their anti-choice bona fides.”
Is that what Hillary Clinton did when attending any of a gazillion pro-abortion conferences, meetings, rallies, and celebratory dinners– she appeared to “advertise her pro-abortion bona fides”?
What struck you listening to Gov. Walker’s remarks and those of other pro-life public officials, including Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and Attorney General Brad Schimel, was how deeply humble and sincere and pro-adoption they were.
They weren’t buffing their pro-life credentials. They were sharing what you and I (and they) are doing to protect and defend the defenseless. After listening to them, you felt better, you were more encouraged, and you were more upbeat.
More coverage today and tomorrow about NRL 2017.