{"id":80269,"date":"2015-11-18T08:40:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T13:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=80269"},"modified":"2015-11-17T18:01:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T23:01:02","slug":"salon-freaks-pro-lifers-holding-journalists-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/salon-freaks-pro-lifers-holding-journalists-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Salon freaks out over pro-lifers holding journalists to standards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, we called out<\/a> Katie Couric for acting as a Planned Parenthood mouthpiece while in the guise of a reporter. This week, Salon\u2019s Gary Legum spectacularly misses the point of pro-lifers\u2019 criticism in a particularly-smug column<\/a> on \u201cthe insane right-wing freak-out over her Planned Parenthood interview.\u201d The condescension rings hollow, though, thanks to the manifest duplicity of pretending that pro-lifers were criticizing her merely \u201cfor showing what PP clinics are really like\u201d…<\/p>\n

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The resulting four minutes of video made antiabortionists angry, presumably because none of it was dubiously-sourced stock footage that claimed to have been shot inside a PP clinic but was actually from somewhere else [\u2026] And yet antiabortionists are up in arms over the segment, claiming it hides Planned Parenthood\u2019s true nature. After all, they have not just those discredited videos.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan<\/a>, the problem isn\u2019t that Mr. Legum is ignorant, it\u2019s that he \u201cknows\u201d so much that isn\u2019t so. As Live Action has been covering for months, the crimes indicated in the videos are very real<\/a>, the Center for Medical Progress videos have not been discredited<\/a> and were not deceptively edited<\/a>, their imagery accurately represents the allegations<\/a>, and the incomplete federal investigation and small handful of state ones have not exonerated Planned Parenthood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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They also have Yelp reviews to prove their case that Planned Parenthood is basically just an unclean, uncaring abortion factory churning out fetal tissue the way Foxconn churns out iPhones. Because when we\u2019re talking about the health of women, we should definitely rely on a handful of cherry-picked reviews written by anonymous Yelp users. That\u2019s a great standard for an allegedly modern society.
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Nobody said that Yelp reviews<\/a> are the standard. They are merely one more piece of the broader picture that\u2019s come into focus over the course of several years\u2019 worth of investigations into Planned Parenthood<\/a> and listening<\/a> to women’s<\/a> experiences<\/a> with the organization. But if Legum is that concerned about evidentiary standards, than surely he\u2019s also offended by NARAL encouraging fake Yelp reviews<\/a> of crisis pregnancy centers?<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s great that some poor 17-year-old girl who needs treatment for an STD should have to go behind bulletproof glass and through a metal detector before being treated for gonorrhea. That is definitely a healthy message that in no way implies sexual activity is shameful that we should want to send to teenagers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s telling that despite the number of pro-aborts who’ve violently attacked pro-lifers<\/a> in recent years, you don\u2019t hear us constantly leveling odious insinuations about our opponents\u2019 predilection for violence like the one above. And as a matter of fact, that poor teenager doesn\u2019t \u201chave to\u201d do that at all; there are plenty of other health centers out there<\/a> ready to make Planned Parenthood obsolete.<\/p>\n

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I couldn\u2019t help but think back to some of the justifications I read about HB2, the Texas antiabortion law that led to the infamous filibuster by Wendy Davis and was eventually signed into law by then-Governor Rick Perry [\u2026] The bill was necessary, they said, because they were oh so concerned with women\u2019s health, with making sure that women who underwent abortions were doing so in the safest and cleanest of facilities. The bill would protect women from the bloodthirsty butchers of the abortion industry.<\/p>\n

Anyone with half a brain in her head knew this was garbage. Abortion is actually a safer procedure than childbirth for mothers, with a mortality rate of .6 per 100,000 compared to 8.8 per 100,000 for live births.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And those with more than half a brain are more likely to be familiar with the numerous researchers who\u2019ve denounced that as a phony statistic.<\/p>\n