Keeping media honest

Now there’s a chore. Some are doing a great job staying up on the hot issues and the truth behind the headlines. Others….

Well, let’s check back on all the heat generated over the Child Custody Protection Act in the writing of columnist Ellen Goodman, in which she referred to pro-life activists as the “usual suspects.” Here’s how she starts the piece:

SOMETIMES YOU have to remember exactly what it means to be prochoice. Sometimes the word “choice” is more than a focus-group label to avoid saying the word “abortion.” Sometimes the slick bumper sticker — Who Decides? — actually defines the argument.

Exactly. Here’s the argument.

I’m writing Ellen Goodman (again), and I’m inviting our readers to consider emailing her as well in reply to her column on the young woman kidnapped by her parents to force her to have an abortion…

I’m specifically answering Goodman’s accusation of Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue, whom Goodman quoted as saying “that forced abortions are ‘epidemic in scope…I have seen sobbing women dragged into abortion clinics by the neck and hair'” and whom Goodman implied was making this up..

Thanks, Amy, for the link. ‘After Abortion’ is loaded with information and references.

I’m telling her about the young 13 year old girl whom I personally saw being forced to go to the local abortion clinic by her mother, or perhaps an aunt. She was in abject, weeping, shaking hysteria over being forced to do this.

I’m telling Goodman that forcing a girl or woman to have an abortion doesn’t have to involve duct tape, guns or kidnapping.

I’m asking Goodman where was her soapbox when actress Ellen Barkin said in the media that she’d “take her [daughter] kicking and screaming to have an abortion.” Goodman was not-so-strangely mum about that.

I’m telling Goodman of the several other stories of forced abortion (links to back this all up are at this post):

Ma Weihua and others, by the Chinese government (as told by Amnesty International).

Sharon Osbourne, forced by her mother.

Arlin della Cruz, forced by escorts into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania abortion clinic.

Donna Santa Marie, by her parents, when 16 years old. Punched in the stomach by her father.

Girls and women, forced by grandmother, boyfriends, some even convicted, some lying, threatening and frightening the daylights out of their girlfriends if they don’t have the abortions.

Coerced abortions in the Church of Scientology.

May 2004: U.S. Supreme Court Dockets Forced Abortion Case: “Eleventh Circuit Court rules that an expectant mother can be aborted by force if the abortionist argues that it is necessary to ‘protect the health of the mother.'”

Garment workers on Saipan, by their employers.

Mexican women, after being trafficked into Florida’s prostitution industry.

North Korean women, by their government.

“Thirty to 60 percent of American women having abortions describe pressure from others as a key reason for having an abortion. Many report that they submit to unwanted abortions only because of abuse.”

“Unwanted Abortions,” a list including forced abortions in Tibet, China, Taiwan, East Turkistan, the U.S. 

The links are all there. I’d love to hear a mainstream columnist intelligently and honestly respond to all this evidence.

And all the evidence in South Dakota.