By Dave Andrusko
There are many indices by which you can tell pro-abortionists are trembling with fear. Today we have multiple posts about one very, very dangerous measurement: either attempting to force pro-life women helping centers into posting pro-abortion propaganda or persuading powerful social media outlets such as Facebook of the moral imperative to censor pro-life news and views.
Over the weekend Life News posted a superb response to one of the most bizarre, evidence-free, stream-of-consciousness nonsensical op-eds I have ever read. It ran [where else?] in the New York Times.
Life News does a fine job debunking many of the multiple strands of pro-abortion hysteria on display in a piece by Rossalyn Warren. I’d like to go wider and deeper in this and a subsequent story for it is truly a scary op-ed.
You can’t miss the charge: it’s in the headline–“Facebook Is Ignoring Anti-Abortion Fake News.” Bear in mind as we go along just stating that something is fake news in the absence of documenting is a quintessential example of fake news. It is made even more bogus when the allegation’s underpinning–scanty as it may be–is flat-out wrong.
And it gets deadly serious –demagogic, actually–when to disagree with Ms. Warren gets you placed in the same category as foreign nations who are charged with trying to manipulate the outcome of the last presidential election. It’s all of a piece–“fake news.”
Wow!
There is lots about how Facebook is trying to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. Warren’s self-appointed task is to persuade Facebook to go after us. Here is the key paragraph and it is unbelievably dangerous:
Now Facebook and its fact-checking partners say its focus is “on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain.” Simply put, without increased pressure, Facebook’s technical efforts and its human efforts, like fact-checkers’ trawling through flagged content, make it likely that the company, in the months to come, will be seeking out only the “obvious” flags of fake news stories and not the misinformation that is fueled by real people with no financial incentive. That is why those of us who are concerned by the misinformation around reproductive rights need to make ourselves heard.
Warren has segued from alleged foreign interference in our elections and “obvious” fake news to insisting that media giants like Facebook squeeze out what pro-lifers say simply because pro-abortionists label it false news. Verdict first, evidence later. Or, in this case, no evidence is required to dismiss out of hand what we say as “misinformation.”
We are now two paragraphs from the end of Warren’s op-ed and there’s been only one allusion to American pro-lifers and supposed “fake news.” It’s a reference to a story that talked about Hillary Clinton and partial-birth abortions and describes–accurately–what happens to the baby.
We’re told the “procedure” is banned in the U.S. which is true, as if that somehow invalidates what the writer said. But the point is that it is banned no thanks to Hillary Clinton who voted against a ban on this gruesome technique while a Senator from New York!
Warren tells us that pro-lifers aren’t out to make money from this “spamming.” No, our motivation is worse: it is “ideological.”
Anti-abortion, anti-science content isn’t being written by spammers hoping to make money, but by ordinary people who are driven by religious or political beliefs. Their aim isn’t to profit from ads. It’s to convince readers of their viewpoint: that abortion is morally wrong, that autism is caused by vaccines or that climate change isn’t real.
What an all-purpose slur. Name-calling in lieu of an argument and reflexive character assassination in the place of an honest debate over issues.
This is not exactly new–it isn’t new at all–for pro-abortionists. But as we will see in our next post today it is now made its way into the journalism profession’s bloodstream. They don’t have to pretend to address what we say fairly because it’s beneath contempt, indeed, as Warren argues, is reminiscent of foreign propaganda stealthily trying to corrupt American elections.
Just imagine if Hillary Clinton were President. This would be exactly how she would view pro-lifers. The difference would be she would have all the levers of the government at her disposal to come down on us.
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.