Recently I attended an anti-choice rally labeled “Building a culture of life during the Obama presidency.” Here I got to witness the anti-choice marketing plan.I heard how the pastors involved made themselves seem as God’s modern day apostles. The pastors literally used phrases such as, “God came to me and told me…” to emphasize their statements.
I listened to twisted facts, deceptive statements, and manipulated statistics. I held myself back as speaker after speaker depicted abortion as nothing less than a crime. They made late term abortions seem always the result of someone’s delayed decision and painted women and doctors as murderers.
I talked to a camp anti-choice leader who mentioned they prefer to target high schools and low-income areas because the people there are more responsive. They also target the Spanish-speaking community and even have short term trips to Mexico and South America.
I watched one of their Spanish propaganda videos. Their marketing scheme includes the handsome and popular actor Eduardo Verastegui (above) as the spokesman, an emotional story, graphic visuals, and a well-known Spanish anti-abortion song. The lyrics of the song are from the perspective of a happy fetus that lives in the womb and then goes through an abortion.
As the anti-abortion song played, they exhibited gruesome inflammatory visuals of “post-abortion” fetuses and even a clip of an actual abortion taking place. The origin of the images were left out. Were they from still births? Were they from abortions where the woman’s life is in danger?
When I recognized the song, I got sad. Not because of the song’s message, but because I realized they are preying on the sensibility of people like my aunt and cousin. When my aunt and cousin from Jalisco, Mexico first made me listen to this song, their eyes got watery and after the song they asked, “Isn’t it horrible?”
This video also includes dishonest and twisted messages. In the video, Verasteguie makes the outrageous claim that Hispanics are the most targeted by the abortion providers and goes as far as to say racist individuals use abortion as a medium to eliminate Hispanics because we are a threat to democracy. In the same rally, Walter Hoye, a keynote speaker, made similar statements as Verasteguie, saying that African Americans are the most targeted community by women’s health care providers.
This is terrible! How can they make such ridiculous accusations and completely dismiss that women’s heath clinics don’t only provide abortions but also provide women with breast cancer screenings, pap-tests, HPV tests, access to contraceptives, etc.
It is mind boggling why in the name of their beliefs they want to stop women from communities like mine from the only access to health care we have. They want to close these clinics. It is ironic they accuse women’s health clinics as targeting African Americans and Hispanics when they are clearly going to great lengths to manipulate us.
I mean, as soon as one of their members from the rally realized I spoke Spanish I was urged to take more pamphlets and DVDs from the bundle I already carried and encouraged I show my family and friends that horrible video.
In the video they also target Barack Obama with incendiary accusations. Verasteguie states with missionary-like zeal, “As a legislator, Obama voted several times against an appeal that tried to protect babies who survived an abortion and are born alive.”
It is amazing how much energy and resources anti-choice supporters can muster. Just think about what we could do if we were able to harness that energy and money to work towards universal health care, including access to comprehensive reproductive health care, especially contraception. Wouldn’t this be a better method for the anti-abortion supporters to reduce the number of abortions?
Most of the grassroots followers are well intentioned, and it is remarkable how they believe in the validity of their convictions. However, I wish they would see that pro-choice does not mean anti-life. Rather, it just means that we want to preserve the constitutional and moral right of every woman to choose for herself.
1 comment:
The cited quotes come from the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html?pagewanted=all
Not only has the pro-choice movement been a remarkable vehicle by which to advance womyn’s reproductive licenses, but it has also helped immigrants and descendants of immigrants to realize their culturally preferred family dynamic.
“In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys.”
I also find it absolutely odious and abhorrent that a womyn’s healthcare provider would be so presumptuous as to try to discourage an autonomous individual from doing with her body as she pleases.
"Dr. Lisa Eng, a Hong Kong-born gynecologist who practices in Chinatown and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said she tried to discourage couples who prefer boys from having abortions.
But, she said, 'If it’s going to be a third, they’re pretty determined to have a boy. If it’s a boy, they keep it. If it’s a girl, they’ll abort.'"
Such psychologically manipulative “counseling” is as bad as the 24 hour waiting periods that so many red states impose on their womyn in their hour of need.
Keep fighting the good fight!
PJG
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