Dueling Chicago Tribune columnists: Byrne slams Zorn for supporting Planned Parenthood
Chicago Tribune columnist Dennis Byrne had two columns out today, one in the Trib and one at RealClearPolitics.com.
The topics of both were the same: the deceptive practices of Planned Parenthood Aurora, but the columns went different directions. In the RCP piece, Byrne took on fellow Tribune columnist Eric Zorn for his September 20 piece, which we discussed, “In defense of Planned Parenthood’s deceptions in Aurora: Sometimes the only way to get fairness will make your foes cry foul.”
I don’t know if the Trib disallows columnists from publicly jousting one another on its pages, or if Byrne just thought better of it. But here’s what he said about Zorn’s column in RCP. The last two paragraphs were particularly inspired….
Most remarkable is the defense made by pro-choice rationalizers of the intentional deception. Eriz Zorn, a Chicago Tribune columnist, for example, justified the “stealth” because “foes of abortion rights, longtime losers in the battle for public opinion, traditionally raise all kinds of ruckus when Planned Parenthood comes into a community.
“Foes not only picket construction sites, but they also send picketers out to harass subcontractors at their homes and businesses, try to spread alarm and disgust in the immediate neighborhoods and attempt to browbeat civic officials into implement just the sort of craven, political motives delays we’re seeing in Aurora.” The “little creative subterfuge,” as Zorn put it, is necessary to “ensure that the law is followed,” meaning the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that legalized abortion.
Breathtaking in its “end-justifies-the-means” logic, we are supposed to accept the idea that the abortion industry can appoint itself to decide whether the public has a right to have the kind of information it needs and has a right to have to affect the political process and governance. True, pro-life activists can be counted on to, as Zorn says, “raise all kinds of ruckus,” but democracy is untidy.
Most troubling about this debate is the assumption that involvement in the political process through protest or direct action is a bad thing. This, of course, would astonish civil rights activists, who used the tactics of picketing, discomfort, inconvenience, disruption and even civil disobedience to engage the nation’s conscience. The Rev. Jesse Jackson just recently was arrested for illegally blocking access to a suburban Chicago gun shop, even though the activities within the gun shop were entirely legal.
Sitting in at a lunch counter and refusing to sit at the back of a bus were just some of the protest and civil disobedience strategies that many of us supported years ago because of the injustice and immorality of Jim Crow laws. That pro-lifers should be accorded the same respect to protest laws they believe to be immoral shouldn’t be too much to ask in a democracy. If not that, perhaps pro-choice people and their liberal supports could at least see their way clear to recognize their hypocrisy.
[Photo is of Rosa Parks, who in 1955 was arrested for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white person, when segregation was legal.]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Pro-lifers are generally anti-abortion because the fetus will one day be a baby/ be born/ be whatever. People who support civil rights support them because they already see the people who need civil rights as people. It’s not like a black person is all of a sudden going to turn white and that’s why we want to give them rights. The already are people, the same people as white people. That and they don’t live in my body, so basically they can live however they want.
so it’s ok to kill people based on place of residence, and stage of development? If so, what’s to logically stop anyone older than you from legally killing you in your own home…so long as they don’t live in your body…?!
So a rapist can live however he wants because he exists outside of your body? A murderer? The unborn are also people; they’re just smaller, younger people. That’s why they’re in utero for a time; for protection and development.
Your emotional detachment borders on death/psychosis.
“The unborn are also people; they’re just smaller, younger people. That’s why they’re in utero for a time; for protection and development.”
And the mother’s a person also, and I believe in bodily autonomy. If a person was to rape someone, they are inflicting their beliefs onto that persons body, so aren’t murderers. Thus they are taking away that persons bodily autonomy.
BTW Jill (you probably won’t even read this), I agree fully with your born alive infant protection act. The fetus is now a baby, no longer inside of the mothers body. To harm it would be to take away its right to bodily autonomy.
Jess,
You have to get inside the mentality of that era. Black people were NOT viewed as full human beings with rights. Even the US Supreme Court agreed, and we know they are speakers of divine proclamation. People were as convinced of this as you are that the unborn aren’t quite human. People didn’t all “see” that black people were human. This mentality has justified enslavement, brutality, and genocide since creation. Humanity was, for the most part, a matter of personal opinion. But I suppose its acceptable for humanity to be in the eye of the beholder, right?
“People who support civil rights support them because they already see the people who need civil rights as people.”
Posted by: Jess at October 1, 2007 6:35 PM
Jess – I think we’ve made it abundantly clear we do ALREADY see unborn babies as people, hence the fight.
I think you people are vastly unaware of what “civil rights” actually are. They’re not rights that every human being is guaranteed to get. They’re rights that we have agreed to have as citizens of this country that are protected by our government.
Unborn children, even born children up to the age of 18, don’t usually have civil rights.
How many children do you know who have the right to carry a firearm? Or have the right to vote?
Civil rights can also be denied a person, hence why some states still have the death penalty or why criminals can’t vote.
So don’t talk about civil rights as if anyone just gets them. Not even illegal immigrants have civil rights in this country. It’s by our humanity that we make allowances. And maybe a little bit of the people misunderstanding what civil rights are, as we can see here.
Jess,
Since you support the Born Alive Infant Act, please tell me what changed genetically and biologically to turn the fetus into a baby. The mother attempted to rid herself of the fetus. She obviously chose not to care for a baby, who by the way makes tremendous demands on a mother’s time and energy, and yes her body. Believe me, being pregnant is easier. What about her rights? What if she wants it dead, period. No adoption. She made a choice and she wants to see it carried out.
Edyt,
You’re wicked.
Edyt: I think you people are vastly unaware of what “civil rights” actually are. They’re not rights that every human being is guaranteed to get. They’re rights that we have agreed to have as citizens of this country that are protected by our government.
Thank you, Edyt – it”s nice to see realization of how things actually work in practice.
I’m not for slavery since we are talking about thinking, feeling people, there, people that can suffer, that have emotions, desires, etc. Same for pregnant women – I don’t want them to lose the freedom they currently have in the matter of pregnancies.
Doug
Again with the semantics?
Double Phooey!
Just some interesting trivia; I believe up until her death Rosa Parks was a board member of Planned Parenthood. I found this out while checking on who is on the board of Planned Parenthood, to find out how they can in any way justify this fiduciary expense of 7.5M in a community that already has tons of access to adequate, and low cost, healthcare.
“Humanity was, for the most part, a matter of personal opinion. But I suppose its acceptable for humanity to be in the eye of the beholder, right?”
Depends on who you ask, Mary. Doug for example, will wholeheartedly agree with you. The baby/fetus/ organism DOES NOT matter. It’s all about mom, will only be about mom, who cares about about anybody/anything else. End of discussion.
“Humanity was, for the most part, a matter of personal opinion. But I suppose its acceptable for humanity to be in the eye of the beholder, right?”
Carder: Depends on who you ask, Mary. Doug for example, will wholeheartedly agree with you. The baby/fetus/ organism DOES NOT matter. It’s all about mom, will only be about mom, who cares about about anybody/anything else. End of discussion.
Once again, we see the most willful desire to avoid the truth, and the weak attempt to attack the truthful side with straw man arguments.
No, Carder, it is not that the unborn “do not matter.” Those are you words, not the words of the Pro-Choice side.
They may matter a great deal. They may matter a massive, enormous, amount. It is up to the woman who is pregnant, and/or the couple who would be the parents.
“Humanity” means different things. To some extent the unborn qualify, and to other extents they do not. No, Carder, it is not necessarily only about Mom – most Pro-Choicers are okay with the restrictions per the Roe decision.
Doug