Get this! Pro-choice and pro-life activists agree on something: the tactics and messaging of the pro-life movement are better than they ever were. And the battle is on.
Here’s another shocker. ABC Nightline devoted a 10-minute segment of fairly objective journalism to “what the pro-life movement looks like at its strongest in the United States today.”
Want to frame one the most nihilistic and anti-religious political stances into a pro-family and relatable one? Let The Washington Post show you how!
In Monday’s “Style” section, reporter Ellen McCarthy did a glowing profile of NARAL President Ilyse Hogue. McCarthy presented Hogue as a relatable, working and expecting (36 weeks pregnant) mother. She opened with Hogue’s “swollen ankles and sleepless nights” and hammered home that Hogue was not the typical type to take on leadership at NARAL, one of the most vocal and extreme pro-abortion groups in the country.
If you thought the tired, discredited "War on Women" meme was a thing of the past, think again. MSNBC.com is doing its best to keep it alive. Witness how they gave a platform today to Ilyse Hogue of the abortion-rights absolutist group NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Sometimes, all you can say is, “Keep telling yourself that.”
Elle’s Rachael Combe recently honored NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue as one of the “10 Most Powerful Women in D.C.” For Combe’s piece, Hogue told Elle that, “Even though states adopted 53 antichoice measures last year,” Americans “really do live in a pro-choice country.” Fortunately, the polls disagree.
Calling your opponents un-American and agitating for the most extreme pro-abortion position doesn’t just get you the attention of Daily Kos or Democratic Underground. It can get you props from a mainstream women’s magazine.
Elle revealed its list of the 10 most powerful women in D.C. on Wednesday – and included NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue as one of the top picks. Hogue recently accused pro-lifers and tea partiers of “lying and cheating,” and posited that anti-abortion means “anti-American”(even when 58% of Americans want all or most abortions illegal).
Everybody says something stupid and offensive at one time or another. But it takes a special kind of ideologue to turn it into a speech repeated over and over. And that ideologue is NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue.
We missed it the first time she told a crowd that pro-lifers are “un-American.” That was at a Feb. 4 event in Washington, D.C. marking the pro-abortion group’s 45th anniversary (see video below). But Hogue liked it so much she said it again in San Francisco on March 4, at an event featuring Sandra Fluke, America’s most famous birth control user.
Remember when you could disagree with liberals and not get smeared as extreme and/or dishonest? Me neither. It’s how the left argues – especially about abortion.
During a Google+ hangout on Feb. 10, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue bashed the pro-life movement and the tea party for “lying and cheating” to pass legislation. She also asserted that the pro-life stance is “outside of the mainstream.” (Not according the polls). The “#ASKNARAL Pro-Choice Hangout” event featured other NARAL employees in addition to Hogue discussing “choice” and answering questions asked via Twitter.
Pro-life sidewalk counseling outside of abortion clinics is "bullying" and should not not accorded First Amendment's "free speech" guarantees agreed the panelists on Thursday's edition of Now with Alex Wagner.
The panel in question was addressing the Supreme Court's decision to hear oral arguments in McCullen v. Coakley, a case which challenges a Massachusetts law which bars anyone but abortion clinic staffers from "enter[ing] or remain[ing] on a public way or sidewalk” that is within thirty-five feet of an entrance, exit, or driveway of an abortion clinic. [Listen to the MP3 audio here; Watch the video and read the relevant transcript below the page break]
MSNBC's latest panel on "women's rights," hosted by Alex Wagner, goes a long way in explaining why the network's ratings are so low. When Americans hear "MSNBC women's rights panel," they know what they're going to get before having to watch even two seconds of it. So why bother?
The drudgery and predictability here certainly expose the abortion movement's priorities. Take Anne Davis, from the euphemistically named Physicians for Reproductive Health, calling out sonograms as some sort of detrimental development for women. Since when has more and better medical information been a detriment to women, or to anyone?
On Thursday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton touted the pro-abortion group NARAL's deceptive attacks on "crisis pregancy centers" in Virginia which try to encourage pregnant women not to have abortions, as NARAL accused these pro-life groups of "lying." Picking up on an article posted by the far left Think Progress, the MSNBC host gave NARAL President Ilyse Hogue a sympathetic forum to promote her agenda.
In trying to prove these pro-life groups wrong, Sharpton quoted the CDC's Web site in describing condoms as acting as an "impermeable barrier," although he ignored the first line of the CDC document which concedes that condoms merely "reduce the risk of STD transmission," as the site displays the words "though not elminate" in parentheses, as the MSNBC host gave the impression that condoms could be considered infallible.
Sharpton introduced the segment:
For years, MSNBC has made it clear where it stands on the issue of abortion in America: on the side of promoting abortion rights advocates against any restriction or regulation on the taking of unborn life. Unsurprisingly, one of MSNBC’s most fervent abortion activists is Thomas Roberts, who apart from using his daily MSNBC show to promote gay marriage, has taken it upon himself to rail against any abortion safety laws as limiting “choice.”
But on his July 30 program, Roberts took things a step further with Orwellian language designed to avoid the A-word. Clinics were instead "choice providers," according to Roberts. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple spends a lot of time picking apart Fox broadcasts, but he was stunned by a Thomas Roberts interview on MSNBC with the new leader of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue. She claimed “we were the first out of the gate to call attention to this case.” Like a news butler, Roberts set her up to make that bizarre claim and then moved on to the next publicist's softball.
Wemple shot back: “Having done precisely 3,454 Nexis and Internet search on the Gosnell case, we missed the part where NARAL had led a charge to highlight the alleged atrocities in West Philadelphia.” He kept searching, and NARAL’s new boss kept looking sillier and sillier: