Pro-lifers might want to look for silver linings, as they hope for minimal loss of life, in the disappointing turn of events in Planned Parenthood's opening today in Aurora, Ill.
Because of the clinic opening, consumers continue to hear the voices of pro-lifers and pro-life leadership in the mainstream media. And, those measured, often gentle, voices make sense.
Unlike the lunatics-for-life who regularly starred in news stories about anti-abortion advocates in bygone days, reasonable people are making their cases against abortion and Planned Parenthood, a.k.a. Gemini Office Development and Gemini Health System, in online, newspaper and television coverage of the controversy.
(Many thanks to Jill Stanek for tip after tip on news coverage [two stories mentioned below] of the ongoing Aurora story, and more, that you will find posted on her website.)
One voice heard in a Fox News Chicago report, Ana McCarthy states with simple clarity her disgust with Planned Parenthood for trying to sneak an abortion clinic in her Hispanic community without the permission of Hispanics like herself.
Anti-abortion's leading voice in Aurora, the Pro-Life Action League's Communication Director Eric Scheidler, addresses each turn of events there with an even-tempered intelligence that comes across on camera.
Scheidler's even-tempered intelligence is also evident in the Chicago Tribune's profile of the former college professor of English, "2nd-generation activists take lead in abortion battle," which compares him to Planned Parenthood's President Cecile Richards.
The Trib's reporter gives Cecile Richards the last word in that story. Planned Parenthood's president said:
"I think [the battle over the clinic] will be associated with increasingly desperate measures ... and that these tactics will backfire."
Since PPFA had the audacity to open its Aurora clinic by filing for it under false names -- and pro-lifers' straightforwardness is finally being represented fairly in some of the press -- Richards' prediction about desperation might actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
(c) 2007 Marybeth T. Hagan
Crossposting with http://www.mothermayibeborn.com
