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Valerielhw
Thank you for debunking John Oliver's misinformation regarding CPCs. Some of what he stated went beyond misinformation. They were bald-face lies.

In a country without universal healthcare, guaranteed housing for those facing homelessness or guaranteed income/jobs, CPCs have been and are a lifeline to countless women who don't want to have an abortion, but find themselves in desperate need of resources.

Abortion facilities such as Planned Parenthood make the majority of their cash through abortions. If people honestly believe that they routinely reach into their own pockets to provide healthcare, housing and in-depth resource-research to pregnant women in need, they are delusional. For-profit abortion facilities such as Planned Parenthood are even WORSE than that, however.

There are literally dozens of examples of how PP fails to report the sexual abuse of minors and returns victims to their abusers for continued rapes. Obviously, PP often doesn't ask and doesn't care about their patient's safety. I could send links to many, many news reports about this from all across the US, but I am not sure if links are allowed in this comments section.

I have heard the CPCs actually outnumber their abortion facility competitors in this country. Assuming that is true, I invite anti-CPC advocates to find one, just ONE, CPC in the US which has been accused of returning sexual abuse victims to their abusers.

I will wait…

Finally, if legal abortion advocates actually consider themself pro-”choice”, rather than pro-abortion, they should not only stop criticizing the concept of abortion-alternative facilities, they should WELCOME them!
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Lola1994!
Unfortunately, I was stuck doing marketing for an agency who had this niche. Left the agency but the pregnancy centers said shocking and terrible things. They also treated my coworkers (who didn’t primarily work on pregnancy centers) terribly. They were very needy and actually paid less because of their beliefs.
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SS
And you still moss the fact that this is a secular country and religion has no place in decision making.
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Anonymous
It’s not a secular country (the Declaration of Independence states that all men were created equal), it’s a country with no state religion where free exercise is constitutionally protected. That means women can seek help from religious charities when they’re in need.
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josfregosoedelstein
You did't prove Oliver lied or took anything out of context, you simply provided lame excuses for the lies and deception of CPCs.
You also didn't prove that the "medical advice" provided by unlicensed charlatans at CPS are nothing more that false propaganda and religious inspired superstitions.
Stop pretending you are promoting "better dialogues".
.
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Valerielhw
There are literally dozens of examples of how PP fails to report the sexual abuse of minors and returns victims to their abusers for continued rapes. Obviously, PP often doesn't ask and doesn't care about their patient's safety. I could send links to many, many news reports about this from all across the US, but I am not sure if links are allowed in this comments section.

I have heard the CPCs actually outnumber their abortion facility competitors in this country. Assuming that is true, I invite anti-CPC advocates to find one, just ONE, CPC in the US which has been accused of returning sexual abuse victims to their abusers.

I will wait…
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AtwoodsNobel
As someone who has received services at a CPC, I can vouch for every anti-CPC trope out there. John Oliver's segment had every right to hold an indignant tone over these centers. He even frames it at one point, "regardless of where you fall on the abortion debate, why is it alright to legally give women false medical information?"
CPC operates under the safety of being a non-profit without being a medical clinic. Pregnancy is the only medical condition I can think of where is it alright to give misinformation and not be sued in this country. If I had a center of some sort under the same pretenses, but was (without a license) performing free ultrasounds on people who were worried about kidney diagnoses, and yet telling them it might be a kidney stone when it in fact turned out to be a tumor, I would get sued and put on the street before the month was up. Wouldn't matter if I was trying my darn, tootin' best. My actions had very real and tangible effects on a person, and Good Samaritan clauses do not apply here.
My own experience at a CPC involved repeating, "NO, NO, NO, this has been dunked, NO, NO, NO, and that is false," in response to a "counselor's" claims regarding abortion and mental/physical health. Imagine that I hadn't received a good education earlier in life? Imagine I hadn't been so brave at that moment? This woman would have shamed and scared me into refusing actual medical care after I literally moments ago found out I was pregnant.
Without hearing anything about an actual clinic that could offer prenatal care (check-ups, blood tests, etc), I left after awkwardly agreeing to an ultrasound session two weeks later. John's claims about trying to run the clock out on abortion legality? I can vouch for that. Here is where the malpractice comes into play. Why would a health-minded worker schedule an ultrasound so far in advance if something could be wrong?
How was this unlicensed "counselor" even supposed to give me an ultrasound? They market it in the way a clinic would, but what if something is horribly wrong and they don't know to look for it? I surely don't know that they are inept, since they have never revealed to me that they are not a true clinic. They do everything in their power to look like one, however.
They prey on the assumption women make, "if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..." to lure them in. As soon as I heard the word, "God," I knew to get the hell out of there. But before that? They have an awfully clean facility. They have a waiting room, a check-in receptionist, a sign-in sheet, medical questionnaire, registration, staff in scrubs, etc. Have you ever walked into a doctor's office and had the staff exclaim, "Hi there! We are a legally licensed clinic for medical advice and treatment!"?
Yeah, I didn't think so. That would be beyond unconventional and strange, since no one in this country is raised thinking that impersonation of a medical clinic is a legal possibility.
I walked down the street to Planned Parenthood, costs be damned. (I was uninsured at the time). They immediately scheduled an ultrasound three days later to rule out an ectopic pregnancy at my first mention of a positive test. My appointment was scheduled so far in advance because they were booked from open until close to that point.
Here's why it's important.
Ectopic pregnancy is a very real, deadly implantation that occurs outside of the uterus. It occurs naturally in about one out of every two-hundred pregnancies. Sometimes the woman's body takes care of it, recognizing the mass as "not quite right" and expelling it without complication. In other cases, it implants somewhere fatal, like a fallopian tube, where its growth will eventually rupture the organ and very quickly cause death of the mother through acute internal bleeding.
As a true medical professional today, my given directive for all women of child-bearing age complaining of torso pain, or showing sudden loss of consciousness or de/compensated shock is this: evaluate and rule-out ectopic pregnancy as soon as humanly possible.
Thanks to the CPC's unethical practices, I could have bled out in the street for all they cared. They simply didn't want me going anywhere near an option for termination.
I understand first amendment rights, and I think NILFA v Becerra was botched in how narrowly the defendants chose to enfore the FACT Act (targeting CPCs when a blanket rule for nonprofits might have sufficed?)
CPCs are especially predatory since individuals who want to litigate must 1) Have the resources to bring the case against armies of Heartbeat International lawyers, and 2) Have been personally harmed by the practice.
Let me make myself clear: women with money, women with insurance, women with health care options will never choose to set foot in one of these clinics. How many impoverished women thanks to a "tricked" pregnancy have the time and resources to undertake such an additional burden? Or the flip-side, privileged women such as I cannot legally demonstrate any harm-- because we were educated enough to walk away.
In the future the actions of CPCs need to be treated as an impersonation of police officers: a crime.
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Anonymous
If any of this really happened (a CPC delayed you from an accurate pregnancy diagnosis) I would suggest identifying where and when, and the name of the centre. Keeping it secret does a disservice to vulnerable women and some of them could end up bleeding out on the streets from ectopic pregnancy because they go to this sham clinic instead of a real health provider. It goes against the standard of care major CPC chains have in place, but there are still bad apples out there.
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AtwoodsNobel
Thank you for taking the time to write this! Thank you for being an ally. This author seems to only have a leg to stand by bloviating, invoking logical fallacies, and citing bunk medical studies (that the authors themselves admitted failed to prove causation, failed to establish directionality, lacked key variables, and chose not to use widely accepted reporting practices).
They're all fantastic reads if you have a pot of tea and are ready to laugh. I thank the true medical community for placing policies that force the disclosure of such things in published papers. (I don't think I am cynical in believing that the papers were published with an intent of having an attention-grabbing title rather than a deduction based on scientific practices.)
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LBD
I have to join in here BC the big old morality ploy is really BS.
I used to be a Christian Conservative anti Abortionist female.
Then I grew up and realised that some women are TERRIBLE mothers and fathers and some children are horrible people that really don't deserve to live. Your "dear child" is more likely to rape someone, haze someone, threaten someone, get in a car crash with someone, and then die... than cure cancer. Statistically.
Now I am an atheist a libertarian and Pro Choice 100% and proud of it.
So with my bias aside let me explain why your morality ploy is BS.
Morality cannot be used bc EVERYONE'S MORALITY IS DIFFERENT as a standard of measurement.
Literally everyone.
Think i'm wrong? Ask the person sitting next to you in church what all their taxes should go to... (none of which goes to abortion anyway) and see all that you disagree with. You will.
In fact morality changes so rapidly that
300 years ago it was immoral for a set of colonies to break from it's "mother" country.
200 years ago it was MORAL for slavery to exist in the USA.
100 years ago it was IMMORAL for women to be allowed to vote BC "politics is dirty".
80 years ago it was "immoral" for a woman to show her knees because "knees are a temptation to men to sin".
60 years ago it was "immoral" for a married middle class woman to take birth control.
40 years ago it was "immoral" for gay men to be open in their relationships.
20 years ago it was "immoral" for a person to take weed due to needing to not be ill from cancer treatment.
10 years ago it was "immoral" to most politicians running for office to support gay marriage.
See how much changes how quickly! Morality changes almost by 50% every 5 years.
What is moral to a Muslim is not moral to a Roman Catholic
What is moral to a Jew is not moral to a Gentile (mixed threads etc...)
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meka3000
"CPC segment ends this way because John Oliver despises Christians"
Or maybe it's the Christian's who bare false witness that he has a problem with? Like the ones from CPC who bare false witness?
"other CPCs are medical providers"
Where's your proof of this exactly?
"she has never encouraged a center to lie about what they do"
Appearing neutral, when the truth is not; is lying. What you brought up is a distinction without a difference.
Also Abby hasn't backed up her claims with anything other than hearsay.
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clinthenryespiritu
I too have come to despise Christians. You believe in a Genie in the sky, fine. But don't enforce your belief in others. Unless you can prove to me scientifically and logically that God exists.
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agneslongstaff
This is a wonderful comment. The points you referenced here were the exact ones that I found fault with in this article, and I'm so glad that you took the time to check the facts. I'm very sorry about your friend, and I hope logical people like you can help others to have a rational conversation about difficult topics like this one.
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Justin Time
"Oliver also complains about CPCs buying Google ads for keywords like abortion, and for locating themselves close to abortion facilities. There is nothing wrong with these common practices. Again, it’s just good marketing."
I am sorry this isn't McDonalds vs Burger King where making the most money and selling the most burgers is the #1 goal, these are basically nonprofit organization who main goal should be offering a service to help people and give them the best possible information they have(and not by tricking people, they should be out right for instance that they don't do abortions and are personally against them).
When your marketing strategy is trying to fool it's "customers" then you lose any more high ground you believe you have. I am fairly certain their is a need for the services these crisis pregnancy offer for many pregnant females who don't want abortions or even undecided if they should get one, but they should be upfront about it before you go there, not try trick you into it and then use heavy handed tactics to get you to see it your way.
Beyond that if the person in question wants services the CPC doesn't offer(contraception or abortions) they should in the best interest of that person have a list of places they may contact about those kind of services after they give their pitch.
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acyutananda
"these are basically nonprofit organization who main goal should be offering a service to help people . . . they should be out right for instance that they don't do abortions and are personally against them)."
You seem to say that the people they should be offering a service to should be only pregnant women. But if you think it's okay for them to be against abortions, isn't it okay if they think of themselves as offering a service to the unborn also? Just for the sake of argument, wouldn't it be okay if they thought of themselves as offering a service primarily to the unborn, as long as they had unconditional love for both and aimed for an outcome that was as happy as possible for both?
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AtwoodsNobel
Not all women who test positive for pregnancy are pregnant, but can easily die from the condition that underlies their false positive.
CPCs will not tell you that this is a possibility, or that getting an ultrasound (in a real clinic) or other medical test is absolutely mandatory to making sure that the woman stays healthy.
Notice how I haven't mentioned the word abortion? This is the "service" all pregnant women get while there.
CPCs don't care about the woman's health; they are more concerned that she doesn't seek care anywhere that might poison her mind towards ending a pregnancy. It's infantilizing and deadly for the sake of a fetus.
How is that unconditional love? They are treating women like blood bags.
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acyutananda
First of all, did you agree with my point that it might be okay for a CPC to think of itself as offering a service primarily to the unborn?
"can easily die from the condition that underlies their false positive."
What condition is that?
"CPCs will not tell you that this is a possibility"
How do you know?
"or that getting an ultrasound (in a real clinic) or other medical test is absolutely mandatory to making sure that the woman stays healthy."
Even if they don't always tell women about the possibility (I have asked you for your evidence), they are functioning responsibly if they are alert to the possibility themselves and qualified to detect it and if they follow up with any necessary steps, including necessary referrals. Many CPC's do free ultrasounds and other medical tests. Do you have any evidence that they are not qualified or do not do the necessary follow-up? (Even if some are not or do not, you seem to have leveled your accusations at ALL CPC's.)
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AtwoodsNobel
First of all, did you agree with my point that it might be okay for a CPC to think of itself as offering a service primarily to the unborn?
No one is arguing what they can believe, neither am I. They can offer a service primarily to the Sacred Cookie Monster, Al-Qaeda, whoever. No one really cares. What I and millions of others take issue with, is that the core model they use to get women to use these centers rests on making them think that they will be receiving medical care while there. The CPC can of course provide a service to the unborn. But they need to be upfront about it. As of now they are doing it 1) in as much secrecy as legally possible, 2) to the direct detriment of women-- legally full persons as enumerated by the Constitution 3) there are no legal repercussions for them to give false medical information because they are not licensed. They aren't subject to the same laws as a licensed doctor or social worker in a practice.
This "whoops, GOTCHA!" of CPCs delays women from seeking out time sensitive diagnoses and treatments at real clinics because they think that they have an appointment with one. This "pretend" care for women while having ulterior motives should come with a forced disclaimer, much like cigarette packaging or alcohol.
The extremely rare ones that are licensed are subject to state medical board complaints, though women may never even become aware that they received debunked and false statistics, therefore never submitting a claim.
What condition is that?
Ectopic pregnancy, a naturally occurring morbidity in 1 out of 50 to 100 pregnancies. Other deadly conditions that afflict pregnant women (assuming implantation is successful): infection, sepsis, diabetic complications, cardiac complications. I could go on, but pregnancy is not safe without prompt, legitimate medical oversight.
A CPC will tell you that abortions can lead to death by sepsis. This is technically true, just like it's technically true to say that you can die of sepsis caused by a wooden splinter. The chance in both scenarios is there, but not remotely dangerous when compared to the EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER rate of death by sepsis due to childbirth.
"CPCs will not tell you that this is a possibility"
CPCs' sole mission is to convince a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. The vast majority are unlicensed. Therefore they are not subject to a whole host of permitting, liability, and legal downfalls that would bankrupt the country's networks within months if it were subject to state oversight. The way out of this? Just weave a story based on what is legal to say. "We have licensed nurses do all sonograms." A licensed nurse might be the one doing the sonograms, but they are not legally allowed to give medical advice in that setting. Who the hell would go to one if they knew that? On their websites, they can give "ultrasounds," but not "diagnostic ultrasounds," because the latter could be litigated in court thanks to medical malpractice laws.
How do you know?
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155&context=njlsp
Court documents from the California FACT Act levy claims that "CPCs employ “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices [that] often confuse, misinform, and even intimidate women from making fully-informed, time-sensitive decisions about critical healthcare." What did NIFLA do? Argue that it is within their First Amendment rights to do so.
#
https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2015-04-17/millions-for-propaganda-nothing-for-womens-health/
https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-07-20/crisis-pregnancy-centers-money-for-nothing/
"Even if they don't always tell women about the possibility (I have asked you for your evidence), they are functioning responsibly if they are alert to the possibility themselves and qualified to detect it and if they follow up with any necessary steps, including necessary referrals. Many CPC's do free ultrasounds and other medical tests. Do you have any evidence that they are not qualified or do not do the necessary follow-up? (Even if some are not or do not, you seem to have leveled your accusations at ALL CPC's.)"
I am allowed to level accusations against CPCs, not just one, because spreading misinformation and appearance of certification is a feature of their model, not a bug.
https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/fake-abortion-clinics/55e0dbc4ca0b0b2c784ce599
Because of extenuating circumstances in late 2016, I found myself at a CPC. "Necessary referrals" in mine and other cases would include a prompt, diagnostic ultrasound. The physically nearest healthcare provider to the CPC I could have gone to was, ironically a Planned Parenthood. Had the CPC cared about my health more than the fetus', they would have said, "You know what? We don't offer diagnostic ultrasounds, and I can't squeeze you in for an non-medical ultrasound for another two weeks. This place next door should be able to fit you in."
Did they tell me any of that? Absolutely not. They didn't even do a referral for any of the three hospitals in the city that could have also helped me. They simply scheduled me so far in advance that had I followed their advice I wouldn't have been able to find an abortion provider in my state.
An ultrasound is a procedure that you and I and other people come to think of as a medical procedure, always conducted by a licensed professional, and always objective. We never think that women would get lied to about the age of the fetus, or hear that it's too early to start seeking comprehensive care (it is NEVER too early, regardless if a woman is leaning to a termination or continuation).
It's just like you would not question if a woman in scrubs tells you they are measuring your white blood cell count: you are not expecting them to be a non-HIPAA compliant entity who is simply going into a back room and swirling the swab in lemonade while writing down an arbitrary number. If that sounds fucking crazy, that's because it is. No one in America is conditioned to level that sort of skepticism towards someone posing as a medical provider, but that's unfortunately what women are put through.
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acyutananda
Just three hours after posting my previous reply, saw this tweet thread from a day ago. It doesn't address all your points directly, but does address your skepticism about unconditional love:
https://twitter.com/LauraEchevarria/status/1130476888475000832
LauraEchevarria

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For all those who say the pro-life movement doesn't care about the mother or baby after the baby is born, here are some numbers and facts:
  1. 2,752 locations--That's the number of pregnancy centers in the U.S. Some of these do ultrasounds by trained nurses). #prolife
    12:22 PM - 19 May 2019
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  2. Of the 2,752 pregnancy centers in the U.S., 6 out of 10 offer ultrasounds but all offer some kind of assistance during pregnancy and AFTER birth. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  3. 81,630 pregnancy center volunteers--these volunteers consult with clients, teach parenting classes, staff the boutique where new moms can find maternity and baby clothes, car seats, etc. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  4. Prenatal and classes and parenting classes are available at a majority of these centers and they cover pregnancy, childbirth and parenting up to age 2. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  5. Because they are community based, pregnancy centers have relationships with other resources in the community and find help for clients in need. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  6. How does the pro-life movement off all of this help? 6.5 million VOLUNTEER hours. No taxpayer funds. IT'S FREE!! They have no financial interest in a woman's decision, no quotas, no incentives. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  7. I can't speak for every pregnancy center but where I worked, we held baby showers for new moms and lined up donors to supply a year of diapers for clients who wanted the help. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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  8. We held parenting classes for moms and separate classes we called "Developing Dads" for fathers. We offered Christmas photo sessions for clients who wanted photos of their children for Christmas. #prolife
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  9. Our center (and a vast majority do this), offered free diapers, wipes and formula to anyone who came in off the street who was in need. No questions asked. No need to prove the need. #prolife
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  10. Our center also worked with a couple of churches to help out moms who were under great financial need. #prolife
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    LauraEchevarria

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    So, next time I see someone write that the pro-life movement doesn't care, I say, "Prove it." Find me some facts, hard evidence that all across this country, every facet of the movement stops caring at the moment of birth. You won't find it. #prolife
    3 replies 18 retweets 122 likes
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    LauraEchevarria

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    Do we care about women? YES. Do we care about children with special needs? YES. Do we care about mom and baby's physical needs? YES. Do we care about mom's emotional needs? YES. Does the pro-life movement charge a dime for what we do? NO #prolife #prowoman
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acyutananda
I tried to watch the Vice video, but a message says "unavailable in your country" (I am in India).
Regarding your first link, Beth Holtzman's paper, I read the Introduction and sections I-III, which seemed to be all the material that might contain substantiation of your allegations. Am I correct to say that Holtzman did no original research? (Is "meta study" the correct name for such a study?) None of the footnotes are hyperlinks. Holtzman seems to have relied a lot on the Waxman Report, which I note was commissioned by a California Democratic politician. The only name in the footnotes with which I had had some prior familiarity is that of NARAL. From some of NARAL's tweets I have seen, and http://blog.secularprolife.org/2016/08/the-democratic-national-convention-pro.html at the last Democratic National Convention, I would have very low expectations for NARAL's honesty. Have you read the Waxman Report and other items of the original research?
I will assume that the Pearson quote is accurate. It was 25 years ago. I don't think that being forthcoming with information, just for the sake of being forthcoming, is more important than saving unborn lives, but CPC's should be careful not to cause delay of any abortion that might be necessary to prevent the death of the mother or severe injury to the mother.
I believe that on the internet there are some ringing testimonials to CPC's by women whom they have served. It doesn't appear that Holtzman covered any of that material in her study. Unless I missed it, I don't think she even mentioned searching for any positive material.
At this point it appears that coming to any conclusion about your allegations would take more time than I can invest, and until I can invest more time, I'll have to suspend judgment, beyond what I have already said, on CPC's.
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acyutananda
What condition is that?
Ectopic pregnancy, a naturally occurring morbidity in 1 out of 50 to 100 pregnancies.
I thought at the outset that maybe you were referring to ectopic pregnancies, but I was confused by your saying that women with ectopic pregnancies are not pregnant.
I'm going to be tied up for a couple of days, but I'll get back to this. I know little about CPC's, and will approach everything you say completely open-mindedly. But my common sense and my acquaintance with many pro-lifers tells me this: pro-lifers make colossal efforts, and unlike many pro-choicers, they very rarely stand to obtain any selfish gain from their efforts. This asymmetry is just an empirical fact about the situation. Pro-lifers are motivated by compassion. The idea that there are large numbers of pro-lifers who see the unborn as ends but see their mothers only as means seems unrealistic to me, and it seems to me that such pro-lifers could only exist (in large numbers) as caricatures. I can't see how the idea computes.
I appreciate the work that you put into your reply.
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Justin Time
My basic point is they should be upfront about their services and not try trick people into using them
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acyutananda
Do you consider being upfront a moral absolute, or at least the highest of all values?
For instance, Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg . . . was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust. . . , Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory. . . . Due to his courageous actions on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg has been the subject of numerous humanitarian honors. . . . Although not legal, these documents looked official and were generally accepted by German and Hungarian authorities, who sometimes were also bribed. (Trickery.)
To save children from abortion by tricking their mothers into using their services would not be exactly the same moral proposition as what Wallenberg did. But let's just start with the question, Do you consider being upfront a moral absolute, or at least the highest of all values?
And suppose a new mother of a born baby were to say, "I'm so thankful they tricked me into going to them. I would have killed my own baby! I know now I wouldn't have wanted to live if I had done that. I was so scared and so confused." In that one instance, did that CPC do right or wrong?
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Anonymous
There's nothing inaccurate about a CPC calling itself "Pregnancy Options Centre" or something along those lines. It accurately reflects the services offered. They may not provide the full range of legal pregnancy options, but neither do most abortion clinics (to my knowledge, there are only about four abortion practitioners that perform third-trimester abortions in the US). If it's okay for an organization that does virtually no prenatal care to call itself Planned Parenthood, it's okay for a pro-life CPC to advertise pregnancy options. If pro-choice advocates think this is too confusing for women, they should persuade the abortion clinics to use less euphemistic, ambiguous-sounding names. Nobody is ever going to confuse "Bob's Abortion Clinic" or "Pregnancy Termination Services of Peoria" with a CPC.
What if someone wants gay-conversion therapy or a hymen restoration procedure? In your view, would a nonprofit organization be obligated to refer for those services?
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AtwoodsNobel
1) "Pregnancy Options Centre" - They offer post-natal options, not prenatal (pregnancy) options. Post-natal =/= pregnancy.
2) "If it's okay for an organization that does virtually no prenatal care to call itself Planned Parenthood..." Please cite your sources. This is untrue.
3) "It's okay for a pro-life CPC to advertise pregnancy options." They advertise pre-natal options while in practice only offering post-natal options. Post-natal =/= pregnancy. This is false advertisement.
4)"If pro-choice advocates think this is too confusing for women, they should persuade the abortion clinics to use less euphemistic, ambiguous-sounding names. Nobody is ever going to confuse "Bob's Abortion Clinic" or "Pregnancy Termination Services of Peoria" with a CPC."
Actually, most abortion clinics DO have the word in their name. It doesn't scare women away. CPCs will omit their "pro-life" stance and ties to the church. You will never, ever, ever find a CPC named, "Mercy of Christ Pregnancy Center," or "Children of Life Resource Center," they are only named misleading things like, "Choices," or "Community Pregnancy Center," completely obfuscating their mission while tricking women into thinking they will be getting impartial facts from a comprehensive medical provider.
This all is compounded by the fact that ethical medical professionals don't steer women to one choice or the other, they simply lay out all options for her and let her make a choice knowing all options with statistics accepted by the medical community at large (even if they morally disagree with that option for their own body).
5) "What if someone wants gay-conversion therapy or a hymen restoration procedure? In your view, would a nonprofit organization be obligated to refer for those services?"
We are not arguing what a nonprofit has to provide. We are arguing the disclosures a nonprofit has to make regarding a life threatening condition and impersonation of medical staff.
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Anonymous
  1. According to Planned Parenthood, you are wrong. Planned Parenthood states that a pregnant woman has three options (parenting, adoption or abortion).
    https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/pregnancy/pregnancy-options
    PRCs readily provide support for the former two options. One can also further subdivide them (marrying or living with the baby's father, single parenting, open adoption, closed adoption, safe drop-off, natural birth, hospital birth, type of prenatal vitamins, etc).
  2. See here, for instance:
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/planned-parenthood-prenatal-care-not-groups-focus/
    Remember also that Planned Parenthood recently got rid of its president (a medical doctor) because she wanted to expand its healthcare services and was insufficiently zealous about promoting abortion.
  3. See 1.
  4. I looked for PRCs in California here:
    https://resources.care-net.org/find-a-pregnancy-center/
    The first five PRCs listed were named "Calaveras Door of Hope", "Tree of Life" (x2), "Bakersfield Pregnancy Center", "Trinity Pregnancy Resource Center", and "Silent Voices". Pretty pro-life sounding names for people that never, ever, ever use pro-life sounding names if you ask me.
    Meanwhile, it's pretty hard to find the word "abortion" in the names listed here:
    https://prochoice.org/think-youre-pregnant/find-a-provider/
    Lots of "Whole Women's Health", "Family Planning", etc.
    This all is compounded by the fact that ethical medical professionals don't steer women to one choice or the other, they simply lay out all options for her and let her make a choice knowing all options with statistics accepted by the medical community at large
    Wrong. If a woman wants to kill herself or amputate a healthy limb, any ethical medial professional is going to try to talk her out of doing it.
  5. California's coercive and unconstitutional law (the FACT Act), which was struck down by the Supreme Court, would have required medical professionals working for PRCs to advertise the state's abortion hotline. So yes, it absolutely is about compelled speech in the form of referrals.
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chrisw10
Where exactly is this audio from the 2012 Heartbeat International conference? I cannot find it and a friend is questioning me about the context of those quotes from Abby Johnson that were pulled out of context.
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joshbrahm
We asked Abby if she had it and she doesn't. Not sure where Last Week Tonight got the audio from. Could have been recorded by a plant. Not sure. So Abby explained the context of both quotes to us and that's what we included in this piece.
1
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dan_rouse
Wait, so "Abby said" is rock-solid evidence? LOL
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chrisw10
That audio sounds like it came right off the room's sound board, so I'm doubtful the source was a plant. And it also seems a little odd for a plant to sit on it for 6 years. Perhaps the organization has the conference audio archived and it was requested and provided directly.
Either way, I'm afraid my conversation has hit an impasse because the explanation you provided and I attempted to provide didn't stick with my friend who is already skeptical of the intellectual honesty of pro-life activists in general (think about how we tend to view pro-choice activists).
Oh well. At least it didn't become a shouting match. Thank you again for the reply!
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Elahatterol
First, I want to say that I found the 'hit job' on CPC's by "comedian" John Oliver to be both dishonest and despicable, and your article tearing that segment apart is mostly 'right-on' accurate.
The one thing that I DO have a disagreement with you on in your blog is where your article seemed to imply that even if you felt that contraception WERE effective in preventing abortions, you would still oppose it.
Then you went on to discuss sex outside of marriage.
You DO realize that-- 1) Many MARRIED couples use contraception, and some are, unfortunately, all-too willing to resort to abortion if they don't have access to it, or if it fails.
2) The vast majority of the population--including pro-lifers--either use or have used contraception, and many 'undecideds' will "tune the pro-life message out" as extremism when pro-lifers express opposition to both in anything CLOSE to the same way.
I will concede that evidence about contraception's effect on abortion rates is controversial.
The widespread use of contraceptives seems to greatly reduce abortion rates in places where abortion had been used as a
PRIMARY method of birth control for decades (such as the former USSR), but, in places where contraception is already established as the "first line" of birth control, making contraception even MORE avaliable has not, in my estimation, consistently lowered abortion rates, and has sometimes seemed to INCREASE them.
An example would be the higher than average rates of both contraception AND abortions in such states as California and New York.
I definately think that any one who opposes both contraception and abortion should make it clear that contraception IS a is a personal-choice, because its use only effects TWO people, while abortion is a HUMAN-RIGHTS issue, because it involves a THIRD person.
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skeptic_thinking_power
Hello. I have posted a comment detailing a response to this article two times now, however it keeps on getting deleted. What is the issue here?
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Rachel Crawford
I was able to figure out the problem. Disqus was marking your comment as spam, my guess is that it may be because of the number of links, but I am not sure. I was able to manually fix it, but I did not see that before. I'll try to keep an eye out for this in the future because I am not familiar with the nuances of what the program marks and what it does not.
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skeptic_thinking_power
Thank you miss. I tried to bracket my links to make sure they wouldn't come up as spam and I appreciate the ERI's commitment to dialogue and openness to criticism.
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skeptic_thinking_power
I am just going to raise a few issues I had with this rebuttal. For the sake of clarity, I am going to avoid dealing with Point #1 because I think that issue is subjective.
Let's start with Point #2.
I think one main issue you are excluding here is the support for Roe v. Wade. Which actually remains really high. More than 40 years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, 69% of Americans say the historic ruling, which established a woman’s constitutional right to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, should not be completely overturned.
http://www.pewresearch[.]org/fact-tank/2017/01/03/about-seven-in-ten-americans-oppose-overturning-roe-v-wade/
So while one could argue that people's personal opinions on abortion reflection a strong minority of those are who are pro-life. The legal reality is that many Americans actually don't support the overturning of one the most fundamental laws that allows for Abortion.
Also it's worth looking at the Trajectory of the issue. The majority of young people are now shifting towards pro-choice views.
The percentage of young adults saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases has risen 10 percentage points since 2015.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds say they have become more supportive of abortion rights in recent years; only nine percent have become less supportive.
In one 2014 study, PRRI found that 65 percent of millennials said the term pro-life describes them "at least somewhat well" while 74 percent of this same survey respondents said the term pro-choice describes them well. And while 52 percent said abortion is "morally wrong" (compared to only 36 percent that said was "morally acceptable"), slightly more—55 percent—agreed that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances.
The latest PRRI survey suggests that some of this ambiguity around abortion is shifting. In the most recent poll, just 44 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds say that abortion goes against their personal morals. (For respondents 65 and up, the number is 60 percent.) And 65 percent agreed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 55 percent in a 2015 PRRI poll of millennial's.
https://reason.[]com/blog/2018/04/18/young-people-shifting-left-on-abortion
So the fact of the matter is yes. While there are a lot of people that have personally pro-life views and a smaller contingent that would like see restrictions. The majority of Americans support legal abortion. And that support is only going to get stronger based on the trends of young people.
Point #3
My issue here is throughout this article you continuously take issue with (and rightly so) for John Oliver for not providing evidence for this claims. Yet here your response is literally a quote from Abby Johnson which provides no insight on the issue at all. Let's take a look at what the evidence says in regards to CPC's
A number of academics have explored this topic, scouring the websites of CPCs. A 2016 paper published in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology found that nearly half of the 85 websites surveyed promoted abstinence-only sexual education. Over 60 percent of these websites provided negative facts about condoms, including minimizing their efficacy and suggesting they break often, and less than 10 percent encouraged the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted infections. [1]
A larger examination of 254 CPC websites, published in Contraception in 2014, found that 80 percent provided at least one item of false or misleading information — most commonly, claiming links between abortion and mental health concerns. [2]
A study published in 2017 in Women’s Health Issues focused on the websites of crisis pregnancy centers in Georgia. It reviewed all of the accessible websites of the CPCs in the state and found that more than half had “false or misleading statements regarding the need to make a decision about abortion or links between abortion and mental health problems or breast cancer.” Eighty-nine percent of sites did not indicate that their centers do not offer contraceptives or direct patients to resources where they might find them. [3]
Researchers from the University of North Carolina who visited 19 CPCs in the state from March to June of 2011 found that nearly half “provide counseling on abortion and its risks,” and over half provided at least one piece of information that was misleading or false, ranging from the efficacy of condoms to links between abortion and infertility, breast cancer and mental health problems. [4]
As you can see, numerous peer reviewed and reputable studies show that a good portion and I would argue a majority of CPC's do in fact promote false information in a lot of these cases. This is not just a state based issue, but we find this as a universal issue when it comes to CPC's
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26493590
[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25091391
[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770790
[4]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770790
I am not going to address point 4 because I think this is once again a subjective matter.
Point #5.
Now this is something that really irks me. I really do respect the ERI Blog, but it saddens me when you guys are still peddling dishonest information. The main citations for a lot of these claims on mental health and Breast cancer is the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Which is a religious special interest group. Let's look at a few of their views: Abortion is unsafe compared to the Child-Birth. http://www[.]http://aaplog.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ab-safer__003.pdf
Even though the consensus in the medical community is that childbirth carries much more risk than abortion, AAPLOG continues to profess that the claim is under-researched, “a serious distortion of reality” and simply “pro-abortion speculation.” The official statement of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is that “where abortion is legal, it is extremely safe.” Numerous research has debunked this issue:
https://www.npr[.]org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/16/593447727/landmark-report-concludes-abortion-is-safe
Major science organizations such as our National Institutes of Health, National Academy of Sciences, or the National Science Foundation, are not leading a charge against abortion. Just the opposite, a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report, titled "The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States", states that abortions in the United States are safe and have few complications.
http://www.nationalacademies[.]org/hmd/Reports/2018/the-safety-and-quality-of-abortion-care-in-the-united-states.aspx Breast cancer and abortion could be linked and further studies are required.
http://www.aaplog[.]org/position-and-papers/breast-cancer/letter-to-incoming-acog-president-hammond/
A lot of the Journals cited by Heartbeat International have had their reports misrepresented or had a flawed methodology of data. The premier authorities on this subject, the Nation Cancer Institute, The American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists has made it clear that there is no statistically strong link here.
https://www.cancer[.]gov/types/breast/abortion-miscarriage-risk
https://www.cancer[.]org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html
https://www.acog[.]org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Gynecologic-Practice/Induced-Abortion-and-Breast-Cancer-Risk
And finally let's talk about Mental Health. The Journal of the American Medical Association published probably the most authoritative report on this subject and showed that having an abortion does not lead to negative health outcomes.
https://jamanetwork[.]com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2626502?redirect=true
In fact, research on the associations between abortion and mental health indicates that women who are denied abortions might have a higher risk of adverse psychological outcomes in the short term compared with women who received abortions. The same study found that eight days after seeking an abortion, women who were denied one reported more anxiety symptoms, lower self esteem and similar levels of depression as women who received abortions. In the longer term — 4 to 5 years after the abortion — women who terminated pregnancies were not at a higher risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety than those denied abortions.
https://www.ncbi[.]http://nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27973641
Point #6 is subjective once again, which is why I won't address either.
My final thoughts. I am an Atheist, and Anti-Atheist. I believe the Christian Faith and other religions are harmful to society and the greater world abroad. But I do admit that Mr. Oliver's smug and condescending attitude isn't going to help anyone achieve a greater level of civil discourse in this debate. While I do believe his points are correct, as I did show above, I ultimately believe there is a better way of having this dialogue.
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Anonymous
Yes, it's been well-established that you can get drastically different results if you make (even slight) changes to the wording of a poll question. The discrepancy there is that most people (especially younger Americans) do not understand what Roe v. Wade actually did (establish abortion on demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy) or what would happen if it were overturned (the law would be left up to the state legislatures, and abortion would still be legal in many states). You would be hard-pressed to find a poll showing majority support for abortion on demand in the third or even the second trimester of pregnancy. It seems that the more specific you get, the less support there is for abortion. That's probably why still, even to this day, the abortion lobby euphemistically refers to the Partial-birth Abortion Ban as the "federal abortion ban".
As for the second poll, it actually shows a net 6% increase in "illegal in some or all cases" since October 2016. So I don't think the pro-life side should be particularly worried. There's good commentary here:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/media-outlets-ignore-key-data-in-new-abortion-attitudes-survey/
And let's be honest with ourselves. If 69% of Americans really did support abortion on demand, Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office and abortion advocates would not have decisively lost three of the last four national elections.
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skeptic_thinking_power
I really don't think your assertions hold much ground here. Yes, it's been well-established that you can get drastically different results if you make (even slight) changes to the wording of a poll question.
I agree with you. This can be issue, however I really don't think it's an issue when we look at the methodology of the study, we can see that the Public Religion Research Institute did a good job asking clear questions that have been building upon trends that other reputable polls did. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.6 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence. The design effect for the survey is 1.4. These are within the realm of statistical significance and we can consider this study reliable. The discrepancy there is that most people (especially younger Americans) do not understand what Roe v. Wade actually did
Once again the data tells us other things because those who are Pro-Choice are actually more intelligent and more educated than those who are pro-life. The statistical smart vote analysis shows that seeing women (and sentient individuals generally) as autonomous moral entities rather than a common resource appears to be the intelligent way to go. Allowing women to abort their pregnancy for their own reasons, follows logically. Not only that, but we find that the Non-Christian Pro-Choicers tend to make the highest percentage of those who are post-graduates, as well as those in other fields. The Pro-Choice perspective is also the dominate view among ethicists and philosophers.
[http://garthzietsman[.]http://blogspot.com/2011/12/intelligent-thinking-about-abortion.html]
[https://ieet.org/index[.]php/IEET2/more/Messerly20160517]
[http://news[.]http://gallup.com/poll/154946/non-christians-postgrads-highly-pro-choice.aspx]
[http://news.gallup[.]com/poll/127559/education-trumps-gender-predicting-support-abortion.aspx]
So in summation, I would say part of the reasons one is pro-choice is because they have most likely studied the issue and given a great deal of thought, as opposed to pro-lifers, who according to those surveyed in the Guttmacher study over half lacked a High School Degree. That's probably why still, even to this day, the abortion lobby euphemistically refers to the Partial-birth Abortion Ban as the "federal abortion ban".
This idea of partial birth abortion is a myth. As for your other comment regarding polls on support over gestational age, there isn't much data on this to begin with. We just have general opinions on the legality and morality of abortion, which most Americans support.
https://www.npr.org/2006/02/21/5168163/partial-birth-abortion-separating-fact-from-spin As for the second poll, it actually shows a net 6% increase in "illegal in some or all cases" since October 2016. So I don't think the pro-life side should be particularly worried. There's good commentary here:
I think you should be worried, because first off the increase you noted belongs to one age group. Whereas overall the trend is shifting in favor of legal abortion among the populace as a whole. The National Review article like most Pro-Life publications panicking over this are trying in an intellectually dishonest to point to the statistically insignificant shifts in different demographics, but it's a complete 180 from the pro-life message. We always hear from the Pro-Life movement about how millennial's will be the: "Pro-Life Generation" and how they will be the generation "that will end abortion". But now that the data has completely burned that narrative Pro-Lifers are scrambling to point to groups that have always traditionally supported them in the past. The thing that should worry is the Pro-Choice movement is growing among those are younger and studies do indicate they aren't going to change their views when they get older. The response of so many pro-life groups do downplay this demographic shift is a telling response indeed. And let's be honest with ourselves. If 69% of Americans really did support abortion on demand, Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office and abortion advocates would not have decisively lost three of the last four national elections.
I think you conveniently forget that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a good margin and that the election was decided by less than 80,000 votes in some Midwest counties.
https://www.weeklystandard[.]com/john-mccormack/the-election-came-down-to-77-744-votes-in-pennsylvania-wisconsin-and-michigan-updated
The thing is, it's about trajectory. National Elections are very complex, where as in statewide and local races we are seeing the Pro-Choice make gains. Just look at the recent victories with the governorship's in New Jersey and Virginia, the election of Doug Jones in one of the most pro-life states in the Nation. The victory of Pro-Choice Catholic Connor Lamb among many other things. There is a huge blue wave and with it rides the pro-choice momentum.
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Anonymous
So in summation, I would say part of the reasons one is pro-choice is
because they have most likely studied the issue and given a great deal
of thought
Pro-choice people have a very high tendency to believe that restricting abortion doesn't stop women from having them (wrong), that thousands of women were dying every year from unsafe abortions before Roe v. Wade (wrong), that one in three American women will have an abortion in her lifetime (wrong), that there's no such thing as a ninth-month abortion (wrong), that women only have late-term abortions when their lives are in danger (wrong), and that women only have late-term abortions when their lives are in danger or the baby has fatal defects (moving the goalposts, but still wrong). This is not at all consistent with studying the issue or giving it great thought. Though I think that, as Ronald Reagan would say, the problem is not that they're ignorant but that they just know so much that isn't so.
But I was not talking about highly informed pro-choice partisans. I was more referring to people in the middle, who may lean one way or the other but don't follow the issue very closely. They're sometimes known as "abortion grays". These are the people that would be most susceptible to giving a pollster an answer that doesn't represent their view. Especially if that pollster falsely portrays Roe v. Wade as more moderate than it really was and proposes "completely overturning" it (what that would entail is left up to the imagination) as the only alternative. Polls also show that a significant minority of Americans (including a majority of young people) don't even know Roe v. Wade was about abortion:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/16/most-americans-under-30-dont-know-roe-was-about-abortion/
Partial-birth abortion is certainly not a myth. Up until the mid-2000s there were doctors that birthed babies partway (in the second and third trimesters) before impaling their heads with scissors, vacuuming the brains out, and crushing the skull. This really happened. Usually, it involved healthy mothers and healthy babies. And the abortion lobby supported it every step of the way. You might not like that they did so, but this doesn't change the historical record. The whole "medical journals don't call it partial-birth abortion" distinction matters to exactly zero people. I personally think "partial-birth abortion" is too nice of a term and that "partial-birth infanticide" would be more accurate, but U.S. federal law uses the former so we'll go with that.
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Anonymous
I think you conveniently forget that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a good margin and that the election was decided by less than
80,000 votes in some Midwest counties.
Neither candidate was trying to win the popular vote, because the popular vote doesn't determine who the president is going to be. Thus both Trump and Clinton attempted to win a majority of the electoral college votes. That's what Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush all did when they ran for president. As President Trump himself explained, he would have campaigned differently if the election were based on the popular vote instead of the electoral college. All of the other candidates no doubt would have done the same. The experts and the elite conventional wisdom say that Trump would have lost such an election. But the experts and elite conventional wisdom said that Trump would have lost an electoral college-based presidential election (there was lots of talk of a Big Blue Wall even as late as 2016).
And Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by the second smallest percent margin of any presidential candidate in the last 40 years (second only to Al Gore, who also didn't become president). In spite of the fact that her opponent was extremely unpopular, "the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history" according to the New York Times. Hillary Clinton and the abortion lobby shouted from the rooftops that Roe v. Wade was on the ballot (there was even a Supreme Court vacancy on election day!). It didn't work, probably because abortion on demand isn't nearly as popular as the Pew poll suggests it is. Instead, they probably freaked out enough Catholic blue-collar voters to cost the election.
You also conveniently forget that pro-life Republicans won majorities in both chambers of Congress and, more importantly, in state legislatures around the country (in 2016, 2014, and 2010). They keep passing restrictions on abortion and abortion clinics close down. States are now vying to make history and be the one to successfully challenge Roe v. Wade, with Iowa passing the heartbeat bill earlier this month. People know exactly what they're getting, and they're perfectly fine with it. Wendy Davis launched her campaign for Texas governor after unsuccessfully filibustering a pro-life bill. The national media fawned and fawned over her, but she lost by 21 points.
The Virginia gubernatorial election has a terrible track record of predicting the midterm election outcome (see 2013). Doug Jones was running against a racist child-molester, and special elections are called special elections for a reason. Elite pundits, having learned absolutely nothing from 2016, say that the Big Blue Wave is inevitable even though generic ballot polls indicate that Republicans keeping their congressional majorities is very much on the table.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/trump-right-on-house-majority/index.html
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Anonymous
As for your other comment regarding polls on support over gestational age, there isn't much data on this to begin with.
The data is there if you look for it.
http://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/354459-most-americans-agree-its-time-to-put-an-end-to-late-term-abortions
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/01/23/marist-abortion-poll-n2275329
http://news.gallup.com/poll/148880/plenty-common-ground-found-abortion-debate.aspx
I think you should be worried, because first off the increase you noted
belongs to one age group. Whereas overall the trend is shifting in favor
of legal abortion among the populace as a whole.
No, it isn't. The trend shifted 6% away from legal abortion among the populace as a whole.
The National Review article like most Pro-Life publications panicking
over this are trying in an intellectually dishonest to point to the
statistically insignificant shifts in different demographics, but it's a
complete 180 from the pro-life message. We always hear from the
Pro-Life movement about how millennial's will be the: "Pro-Life
Generation" and how they will be the generation "that will end
abortion". But now that the data has completely burned that narrative
Pro-Lifers are scrambling to point to groups that have always
traditionally supported them in the past. The thing that should worry is
the Pro-Choice movement is growing among those are younger and studies
do indicate they aren't going to change their views when they get older.
The response of so many pro-life groups do downplay this demographic
shift is a telling response indeed.
I read a lot of pro-life publications, and panic isn't the reaction I'm seeing. Most of them simply ignored the poll. Which is quite reasonable since one poll result (one that's only disturbing for pro-lifers if you squint at the crosstabs) just isn't that interesting to anyone with a passing knowledge of statistics. And obviously people are changing their views as they get older, seeing as support for legal abortion went down 6%. We also don't know whether it's pro-lifers becoming pro-choice, or just hardcore abortion advocates becoming even more extreme. The main argument for the pro-life generation narrative has always been that young pro-life advocates are more passionate and more savvy than their pro-choice counterparts. That's what NARAL found a few years ago, and it's what polls of single-issue (and multi-issue) voters have found. It's an intensity gap. The Pussy Hat Rally might have changed things, but it remains to be seen whether that will have any staying power or if it will just be another Occupy Wall Street.
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Anonymous
So in summation, I would say part of the reasons one is pro-choice is
because they have most likely studied the issue and given a great deal
of thought, as opposed to pro-lifers, who according to those surveyed in
the Guttmacher study over half lacked a High School Degree.
Pro-choice people have an very high tendency to believe that restrictions on abortion don't stop women from having them (wrong), that thousands of women died of illegal abortions every year before Roe (wrong), that one in three American women will have an abortion at some point (wrong), that there's no such thing as an abortion in the ninth month (wrong), that women only have late-term abortions when their lives are in danger (wrong), that women only have late-term abortions when their lives are in danger or the baby will have lethal birth defects (moving the goalposts, but still wrong), and that there's no such thing as partial-birth abortion (wrong!). As Ronald Reagan would say, the problem is not that they're ignorant; it's that they know so much that just isn't so.
At any rate, I was not talking about people with strong views that have studied the issue a lot. I was referring to people in the middle, who may lean one way but don't closely follow the abortion debate. These people would be less likely to know what Roe v. Wade actually did and would be quite susceptible to giving a pollster an answer that doesn't accurately reflect their views, especially if the poll implies that Roe v. Wade only legalized first-trimester abortion and proposed "completely overturning" it (pretty ambiguous - what does that even mean?) as the alternative. Consistent with their lack of knowledge about the Holocaust, young Americans are the least likely age group to know Roe v. Wade was even about abortion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/16/most-americans-under-30-dont-know-roe-was-about-abortion/?noredirect=on
This idea of partial birth abortion is a myth.
No, it isn't. Prior to the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, there were doctors that partially birthed babies in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy before stabbing them in the head, sucking the brains out, and crushing the skull. Most of the time this involved healthy mothers carrying healthy babies. This really happened, and the abortion lobby supported the practice every step of the way. You might not like that they did so, but that doesn't change the historical record. The whole "partial-birth abortion was never called that in the medical journals" distinction matters to exactly zero people. Personally I think "partial-birth abortion" is too nice of a term and that "partial-birth infanticide" would be more accurate, but U.S. federal law uses the former term so we'll go with that.
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Anonymous
The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.6 percentage points at the
95% level of confidence. The design effect for the survey is 1.4. These
are within the realm of statistical significance and we can consider
this study reliable.
So? The margin of error and design effects relate to sample design and non-response. They have nothing to do with the fact that the survey asked flawed, biased questions.
Once again the data tells us other things because those who are
Pro-Choice are actually more intelligent and more educated than those
who are pro-life.
I'm not aware of any survey that cross-tabulates support for abortion against IQ. Nor have I ever seen the term "statistical smart vote analysis" outside of the blogspot post you were copying and pasting from (and I follow this stuff quite closely). But it hardly follows from there that the pro-choice position must be the correct one. There are some things that only someone with a PhD could possibly be stupid enough to believe:
https://reason.com/blog/2018/03/21/video-games-toxic-meritocracy
Eugenics and the lobotomy craze were both more popular with non-Christian postgrads than they were with the general public, yet eugenicists and lobotomy enthusiasts were on the wrong side of history. Ivy league medical ethicists are also more likely to support infanticide than normal people are. In the words of the pro-life philosopher Trent Horn, philosophy can make people so smart that they turn into idiots. I'd rather have knuckle-dragging Christians on my side than highly educated eugenicists and infanticide apologists.
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acyutananda
"I'm not aware of any survey that cross-tabulates support for abortion against IQ."
Moreover, even if intelligence and education manifest as support for abortion, does that prove that they manifest as understanding what Roe v. Wade actually did (which I believe was the question at hand)?
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Anonymous
I had another comment detailing common misconceptions widely held among abortion supporters, as well as distinguishing between hardcore people that follow the issue closely and "abortion grays". I will try to resubmit it when I have time.
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Anonymous
John Oliver is a tremendously talented comedian.
This would be true, but you ignore the fact that he isn’t funny and his accent is stupid.
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timothybrahm
It is my honest opinion that he is truly hilarious at times. I think the first couple of seasons of his show (or at least what I've seen on youtube) were regularly extremely entertaining and not obnoxiously partisan.
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Andrew Anderson
I kind of was laughing at the quote bubble "I'm tottally pooping in here"
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izakburger
I think many such comedians are brilliant when they operate within their area of expertise, so to speak. Take your other big comedian, Trevor Noah, who actually hails from my country (I'm South African). He was hilarious as a South African comedian, I loved his material. Now he's over there and he has to deliver the content prepared by his liberal handlers, and it's not funny at all. I thought Noah would improve the daily show. Instead, the daily show ruined Noah.