Saturday, January 23, 2010

March for Life 2010

I have to say that I wish I could have been at one of the marches yesterday! The second half of Paul's winter term always starts back up on this particular weekend and I am not quite daring enough to make the ten hour round trip drive by myself to go to the closest march (and besides, we only have one car and since Paul has it I'm stuck out here in the booneys). Each year I hope that the professor will cancel class, or maybe even say, "hey, since this is a Catholic theology program, you know what we should do?"... but it's highly unlikely that that will ever happen (at my Catholic College, which I actually think might be a little more orthodox than Paul's, we were encouraged by Professor's to get extra credit by going to pretty much any far left protest... usually the type of thing that ended up being organized by MoveOn.org).

So on Friday I was at home, adding my prayers to all the others out there, that this will be the year that, after 37 years, the unspeakable horror and slaughter that goes on daily in doctor's offices and clinics and hospitals across the country, will finally comes to an end.

I have to say that the media coverage has actually been rather exciting to follow. From the National Catholic Register to The American Spectator you can read about what really happened at the Marches. But what is really the most telling is the mainstream media's confused (intentionally or not) coverage of the event. The woman writing at Newsweek (whose hardly coherent article they attempted to explain at the American Spectator) doesn't seem to understand that "The March for Life" was a Pro-Life event. It's amazing that Newsweek would post something that was so confused, but I guess that just shows how far gone they are (my parents stopped their subscription months ago, and Newsweek keeps on sending the magazine along with final notices. They'll actually be happy when they get the final final notice.).

Steven Greydanus at NCR writes about his experience and refutes the mainstream media's claim that there were no young people there. Here's part of his description of the day in D.C.:
"Yesterday, tens or even hundreds of thousands of pro-life demonstrators rallied in Washington, DC. Catholic News Agency cited “hundreds of thousands” and quoted an EWTN estimate of 300,000. A police officer at the march told me that the unofficial police estimate was 50,000, but added, “There’s way more than that.” Numerous police officers on the ground told me that attendance was significantly up than last year’s record-breaking levels. One officer seemed a bit worn out by the sheer size of the crowd and the length of the time it took the whole march to get up Constitution Avenue. All I know is it took me from 2:00 to 4:45 to get from the rally site to the Supreme Court building—a distance of about a half-dozen blocks.

Were there counter-demonstrators also? A few, apparently. I’ve seen pictures that show they were there..."
Yet CNN says that "Abortion rights supporters and opponents" were there protesting? Here's more from Greydanus on CNN's wording:
"Supporters first, opponents second, with no indication whatsoever of the relative sizes of the two groups. Nowhere in the article is there any indication whatsoever of how many of each group were present. Not even “tens of thousands” or even just “thousands” of pro-lifers. Just “Abortion rights supporters and opponents.”

This is sheer mendacity—not even just biased journalism, it’s outright malicious deception.

This was not a meeting or juxtaposition of two opposed demonstrations, however equal or unequal. It was a massive pro-life demonstration with a few counter-demonstrators. We were the event; they were a tiny footnote. That is simply a fact that the CNN.com piece is nakedly attempting to bury."
The article goes on to talk about CNN's claim that young women were missing from the March. Yet if you just glance at the pictures of the crowds it's plain to see that that is simply not true. Maybe that's why CNN was showing pictures of five pro-death demonstrators instead of the hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers that were there? It would have only taken a good look at a photo of the March to reveal the lie.

The Pro-Life movement is large enough that the media feels the need to twist the facts in order to fit their small, relativistic view of reality. And it's only going to keep growing!

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