NPR’s biased interview about abortion in the black community
UPDATE, 11:10a: I wanted to highlight a great talking point Ryan made in the interview we should all integrate and begin using:
Michel Martin: Reverend Veazey’s point is that African-American women are more likely to have abortions because they’re less likely to have access to healthcare. What about his point?
Ryan: Let’s actually make sure we’re talking about the same thing. We’re talking about reproductive healthcare, not healthcare. How is it that the same people that can find these clinics to have an abortion can’t find the same clinics for contraception?
Awesome!
10:44a: On July 18, NPR refereed a debate between Ryan Bomberger, CEO of www.TheRadianceFoundation.org, and Rev. Carlton Veazey, President and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
I thought Ryan did great, but he reported afterward he would have scored even more points had NPR not severely edited him. “NPR’s liberal colors shone though as they cut out minutes worth of my responses yet kept every single word he spoke intact,” wrote Ryan in a follow-up report.
Ryan identified where and what the edits were in this YouTube video of the interview…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG4-LqtiAGw[/youtube]
Host Michel Martin repeatedly labeled our side “anti-abortion” (only 1x “pro-life”) but the other side “those supporting reproductive choice,” the latest euphemism for abortion advocates. “Pro-choice” and “abortion rights proponents” must be passé. She also characterized the pro-abortion organization Guttmacher Institute, which was launched by Planned Parenthood, a “nonpartisan research group.”
Veazey embodied the tired, old, and sometimes confusing arguments from the other side with a twist, claiming pro-lifers “abort” post-born children “through lack of healthcare” and “lack of education.”
Veazey was particularly incensed about the pro-life billboard stating a truth that “Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted,” with a graphic of President Obama. “Through your lack of concern for the social issues you’ve aborted a lot of children that could have been an Obama,” Veazey rebutted.
The most interesting point NPR completely gutted was when Ryan called out Veazey for making $183,000 a year for working only 5 hours a week, which Veasey denied. However, the IRS Form 990 doesn’t lie. Click to enlarge…
The fact is if abortion weren’t so lucrative, people like “Reverend” Veazey wouldn’t so adamantly support it.
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.
Rev. Veazey: “Women are moral agents…”
We are all moral agents. What Veazey needs to ask himself is, “Is it possible for moral agents to make immoral decisions?”
“Through your lack of concern for the social issues you’ve aborted a lot of children that could have been an Obama,” Veazey rebutted.
When are pro-choicers or whatever they call themselves nowadays going to realize that the pro-life community is NOT monolithic? I belong to no political party, and support public education, some kind of universal health insurance, etc. If I didn’t care about social issues, I wouldn’t be in this low-paying, stressful field. I wish the (not so good) Reverend would check out this board. We have atheists, conservatives, liberals here. We agree to disagree on certain things, but at the end of the day, we’re all pro-life, concerned about babies AND their mothers.
$175,000 for five hours a week? Nice work if you can get it!
1. This is the only way that both sides will get discussed on NPR. Better than nothing.
2. The Veazey money: we liberals want govt programs to funnel money to certain healthcare providers, so this can be cycled back to election coffers, adn supporting these astroturf groups. As PP funding gets reduced, there will be less money flowing around to support a spokesperson at such a rate.
“Through your lack of concern for the social issues you’ve aborted a lot of children that could have been an Obama,” Veazey rebutted.
Huh? In what way are social conservatives running around and “aborting” children?
What does he mean by “aborted”? Are there massive numbers of children being killed somewhere outside of abortion clinics that we don’t know about?
We have the equivalent of a 9/11 every day inside the abortion clinics, driven by liberal profiteers.
Chris, I guess he means that prolifers don’t care about children after they’re born, blah blah and we don’t care that some children don’t have access to health care, good educations, etc. I care about children born and unborn, the environment, animals, etc. We all know this is NOT true and I’m tired of hearing this junk (I would use a stronger word, but I would be banned).
Pro-abortionists want to make sure that there are as few people born as possible through whatever means necessary (abortion, birth control, sterilization, etc). Their mindset is that they want government control and it is easier with less people. It is not only why they are spout so much anti-natalist propaganda, but also why they are usually such enthusiastic supporters of euthanasia. I could write a book on why this is, but I recently saw a snippet that illustrates it so well: “When Roosevelt when President, Liberals wanted to grow a bigger pie so everyone could get a bigger piece. However, today “Liberals” want a small a pie as possible and embrace a culture of death in order to make sure that they get their piece.”
I would like children to have access to health care, which is why I ensure I work hard enough to have a job that pays for my children’s health care. I would like all parents to work hard enough to provide their own health care for their children. Otherwise I as a taxpayer have to provide for my children *and* their children.
” I would like all parents to work hard enough to provide their own health care for their children. Otherwise I as a taxpayer have to provide for my children *and* their children.”
It’s really not the children’s fault if their parent’s suck.
Nor is it my fault if their parents suck.
I appreciate what you say JackBorsch, which is why I would actually hope the good reverend would inspire parents to not suck rather than inspire them to run to the government for help.
“I appreciate what you say JackBorsch, which is why I would actually hope the good reverend would inspire parents to not suck rather than inspire them to run to the government for help. Therein lies the problem — “if the government will be an enabler and pay for my kids’ care, I don’t have to.””
I know a few “welfare-minded” people who are like that, sure.
I know even more who hit very unfortunate circumstances and were unable to get themselves out without help. To think that we will ever be able to have a society free of these things is a little ridiculous. Of course people should be required and helped to work, but I’m not going to agree with letting kids suffer because their parents are lazy or in bad circumstances.
Thanks for the good words JackBorsch. You are an ally for the unborn, and I appreciate the dialogue.
‘thelastdemocrat’
Everytime I read that moniker I smile and look forward to the 2012 elections with the goal being to see the ‘last democrat’ leaving D.C. with a RINO under one arm and a progressive humanist under the other.
This will happen much faster if we deny federal tax dollars to ‘leftist’ enterprises like pp, ACORN, and NPR.
[Have I abstained long enough from highlighting the rodent portion of the term ‘democrat’ or should I maintain my ‘temperance’?]
De-odorize the Whitehouse: Remove b o
duces tecum
Wow, I have never heard of Reverend Veazey or the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice but I really like him. It’s nice to hear from other religious, devout, logical, and kind people that are also pro-choice. Thanks for posting this! :)
I don’t think anyone bothers to take you seriously anymore, derrr .
Oh, I take derrr seriously. She means what she says. “Logical” and “pro-choice.”
Well, Pamela, I am being serious and I find your attitude to be quite offensive. I really enjoyed learning about this Coalition and I come here to discuss a topic I feel very strongly about. I’ve noticed that you never go beyond directing petty insults my way, even when I engage you directly. Do you have any arguments besides name-calling and insults or is that pretty much it?
Derrr is actually way more polite than most choicers, even if it looks weird when I type her name. :)
Thanks, Jack. I find you to be very polite, open-minded, and logical – and not just for a pro-life person. :)
Same old contrived lies… completely glossing over the link between abortion and the poverty that has faced the black community for over 400 years… skip all the facts you wish it still doesn’t make you right.
What a stupid quote “We’re talking about reproductive healthcare, not healthcare”
That’s like saying “We are talking about cherry ice-cream not ice-cream”
Reproductive healthcare, respiratory healthcare, circulatory healthcare, general practice healthcare, specialized preventative healthcare, mental healthcare, substance addiction recovery healthcare, prenatal healthcare, post natal healthcare, dental healthcare, vision healthcare, post-op and outpatient healthcare….. Shall I go on???
It is all HEALTHCARE!!!
Should an insurance company decide which procedures or healthcare you receive? What if an insurance company decided not to cover heart by-pass surgery because the stints are not bio-degradable and a extreme left wing group felt everything in the human body should not hurt the planet once you are dead…
No your insurance should cover any procedure that you and your doctor feel are necessary without anyone else’s opinion butting in… Your healthcare is between you and your doctor.
Jill,
The only problem with Ryan’s talking point is that he seems to use the argument that contraception decreases the number of abortions, which we all know is baloney. Obamacare is set to require contraception coverage by all insurance companies, without exception, under the guise that it will decrease the number of abortions. Bull. The opposite will happen.
And if I may, contraception is not reproductive “health care.” Fertility isn’t a defect or a disease. And we all know that pills and artificial hormones are not good for women.
Should an insurance company decide which procedures or healthcare you receive? What if an insurance company decided not to cover heart by-pass surgery because the stints are not bio-degradable and a extreme left wing group felt everything in the human body should not hurt the planet once you are dead…
Only, our argument isn’t which procedures should be funded/not funded under private contracts…our argument is that the currently legal “medical procedure/reproductive healthcare” abortion shouldn’t even remain legal because it kills another human being. Money doesn’t enter this equation. If abortion didn’t kill another human being, I wouldn’t give a rat’s rear about who pays for abortion when, where, or how.
Jill side note
you said
Obamacare is set to require contraception coverage by all insurance companies, without exception, under the guise that it will decrease the number of abortions. Bull. The opposite will happen.
I don’t think most people want to include coverage for contraception for the principle reason that it will reduce abortion. People’s motivations arent always related to abortion. Women en masse want contraception so they don’t have an unwanted pregnancy for obvious reasons, everything isn’t related to abortion all the time
Eric,
I’ve got to address this
you said I would like children to have access to health care, which is why I ensure I work hard enough to have a job that pays for my children’s health care. I would like all parents to work hard enough to provide their own health care for their children. Otherwise I as a taxpayer have to provide for my children *and* their children.
Essentially yes. You don’t have the ability to not pay for other people. Pro-lifers infamously say they don’t wan to pay for contraceptive services because if someone is going to have sex, they should pay for it. I dig this, sentiment, and in an abstract world I totally believe in it accept it doesn’t work that way.
As tax payers, we can pay for condoms ( the cheapest option) If we don’t want to pay for condoms we can pay for abortion. If we don’t want to pay for abortion we can pay for public school and welfare. If we don’t want to pay for public school and welfare we can pay for jail and the cost of crime ( the most expensive option).
We can tell people to zip it up all we want, but unless we sterilize people we have to understand that people will conceive. If we force people who cannot afford their children to give birth we will pay for those children, it seems very counter pro-life to think anything else
“We have the equivalent of a 9/11 every day inside the abortion clinics, driven by liberal profiteers.”
You live in RI, right? So you should know that our Planned Parenthood only does abortions on Saturday. Mon-Friday it’s other business.
“And if I may, contraception is not reproductive “health care.” Fertility isn’t a defect or a disease. And we all know that pills and artificial hormones are not good for women”
The FDC approved contraceptive pills years ago. Every medicine has potential side effects. But are you saying that all coitus should be “open” for conception? Are you saying that unfettered fertility is good for women – especially poor women? Are you not aware of the correlation between poverty and unfettered fertility? Are you aware of the poverty in countries that withhold contraception from women? Are saying that no contraception is better than some contraception? You do know that if women have no access to birth control, they will produce more pregnancies and as long as Roe is legal, many of these pregnancies will end in abortion. BTW, health care policies do cover Viagra. Oh, right. That’s for making babies so it’s all good….
Unless pregnancy has been re-classified/re-defined as a sexually transimitted disease, then elective abortion is NOT health care.
Elective abortion does not heal a disease or treat an injury.
It is an elective surgery, akin to breast augmentation or a tummy tuck, and as such should NOT be funded by federal tax dollars.
I have nothing to do with a female’s ’choice’ to have sex, therefore I am not responsible for the consequences of the females ‘choice’.
If females want equality, then they should stop demanding special treatment.
Buy your own contraceptives and pay for your own elective surgery with YOUR money, not mine.
Keep your uterus out of my wallet.
What private insurance companies choose to cover/not cover should be decided by the free market place not a bunch of whining females who demand freedom of ‘choice’ and at the same time refuse to take responsibilty and accept accountability for their ‘choices’.
Ken, you never disappoint.
CC @ 6:48pm
If only you would desire the same kind of accuracy and truthfulness when it comes to the humanity of the unborn.
On the other hand, your ability to comprehend what you’re reading appears to be seriously lacking, especially when I’m referring to the entire country and abortions averaged over a year.
Many of us don’t want viagra covered under health insurance policies, but our protests have gone unheeded. It isn’t covered because pro-lifers have won some great victory over making babies, duh! It’s covered because obviously an overwhelming number of men in decision-making positions made it so. However, I worry about men mis-using such a drug when maybe they have health conditions that should be addressed instead.
Same old contrived lies… completely glossing over the link between abortion and the poverty that has faced the black community for over 400 years… skip all the facts you wish it still doesn’t make you right.”
—
I’m Black. What’s the link?
I care about children born and unborn, the environment, animals, etc. We all know this is NOT true and I’m tired of hearing this junk (I would use a stronger word, but I would be banned).
Phillymiss, I carry no weight here as far as moderation,but I’d always vote you back in, if ever that happened. : )
“.. African-American women have more abortions because they have more unwanted pregnancies…”
In this comment is the seed of truth, but let me rearrange the words thusly:
“African American women’s pregnancies are less wanted, so they have more abortions.”
Now, the question to ask next is why? It isn’t because of access because if they can get to an abortionist, they can get to birth control pills. However, even Guttmacher admits on their site that at least 54% (more than half) of women procuring abortions were using contraceptives when they got pregnant.
Why? Why do African American women abortion more often, by percentage, than any other population in America? Marketing? Self-esteem? Broken homes? Fatherless families? I think marketing is a huge, huge factor. In my community, at our county health clinic for example, ALL the abortion advertisements and abortion pill advertisements feature African American women. Is that not racial bias? Maybe abortion advocates think that the advertising is ‘racially diverse’ but I think it is profiling, profiling African American babies for destruction.
Margaret Sanger deliberately targeted this population. It should suprise no one that decades later, the cross-hairs are still focussed on the same population.
I know a few “welfare-minded” people who are like that, sure.
I know even more who hit very unfortunate circumstances and were unable to get themselves out without help. To think that we will ever be able to have a society free of these things is a little ridiculous. Of course people should be required and helped to work, but I’m not going to agree with letting kids suffer because their parents are lazy or in bad circumstances.
Jack, things are so relative – I hear you about “unfortunate circumstances,” but contrast that with what is considered “middle class” in many areas of the world. Hey – our “unfortunate” is often better.
Not to demean the comparative suffering those American unfortunates are undergoing, either – this is a “new deal” born of many decades of heinous fiscal malfeasance on the part of our elected Congresspersons, almost without regard to political affiliation.
Indeed, “the poor are always with us,” yet there is a real and enormously impactive change going on right now – the decline in the standard of the average American. this is due to rising energy costs, lack of competitiveness for American labor on the worldwide scale, and all the decades of horrendous debt-building that are behind us.
Too bad we had the speculative bubble of the 1920’s, but that is human nature – the markets swinging from one extreme to another, and our lot is that gov’t has always gone into debt from that time, in order to “make things better” (buy votes).
Well, the party is nearing an end. Okay, so what? No crystal ball here, but whereas before we were used to a general feeling of things “getting better,” standards of living rising through the 1950’s, 1960’s etc., we are now faced with things not rising, or even (gulp) declining. Our culture doesn’t easily give up on past trends – witness the people in their 20’s and 30’s still living with their parents so as to save money for (basically) partying or less critically, for more disposable income, but the broad trend downward is in force.
“.. African-American women have more abortions because they have more unwanted pregnancies…”
Ninek: In this comment is the seed of truth, but let me rearrange the words thusly:
“African American women’s pregnancies are less wanted, so they have more abortions.”
Well, close, but you’d need to say, “less wanted on average.”
If more abortions are necessarily a function of women having more unwanted pregnancies, then one could argue that women in the liberal northeast have more unwanted pregnancies than do their counterparts in the South or midwest, since a greater percentage of pregnancies in the northeast end in abortion than do pregnancies in the South or midwest.
;)
But anyway, facetiousness aside, the reason a greater percentage of pregnancies for Blacks end in abortion than do any other group is because Black women, on average, are the most liberal group in regards to attitudes towards abortion. Much like a greater percentage of pregnancies in the northeast end in abortion because women are more accepting of abortion in those areas, a greater percentage of pregnancies to Black women end in abortion as Black women are more accepting of abortion than other women. It’s really quite simple.
Some Guy: If more abortions are necessarily a function of women having more unwanted pregnancies, then one could argue that women in the liberal northeast have more unwanted pregnancies than do their counterparts in the South or midwest, since a greater percentage of pregnancies in the northeast end in abortion than do pregnancies in the South or midwest.
Well, I’d say that’s not really mathematically sound, since you are comparing raw numbers with percentages, i.e. even if the northeast had a lesser per-capita rate of unwanted pregnancies (or pregnancies, period, for that matter) the abortion rate could still be higher.
____
But anyway, facetiousness aside, the reason a greater percentage of pregnancies for Blacks end in abortion than do any other group is because Black women, on average, are the most liberal group in regards to attitudes towards abortion. Much like a greater percentage of pregnancies in the northeast end in abortion because women are more accepting of abortion in those areas, a greater percentage of pregnancies to Black women end in abortion as Black women are more accepting of abortion than other women. It’s really quite simple.
My disagreement here is that you are not allowing for other factors. “More accepting” would not be required. If, for example, blacks and non-blacks had the same rate of acceptance of abortion, then a higher unwanted pregnancy rate would still result in a higher abortion rate.
Making no pronouncements here – and I realize that there are regional differences, but from what I’ve seen, in the black community, the “Christian ethic” is more in place than for whites, on average.
“Jack, things are so relative – I hear you about “unfortunate circumstances,” but contrast that with what is considered “middle class” in many areas of the world. Hey – our “unfortunate” is often better.
Not to demean the comparative suffering those American unfortunates are undergoing, either – this is a “new deal” born of many decades of heinous fiscal malfeasance on the part of our elected Congresspersons, almost without regard to political affiliation.”
I’m really thinking more of the runaways, the drug addicts, and others I knew (and was) when I lived on the streets. There’s some real poverty here. I know most people think of “poor” as not having cable, or not being able to get a new car, but I think of poor as living in your car. It makes me nervous when people start talking about everyone should be able to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, because that kind of thinking has already damaged the social programs that are really desperately needed at that level.
the ir-reverant and ir-relevant Veazy has taken a few too many hits on the humanist crack pipe.
It is not consevatives or republicans or pro-lifers or tea partiers who are aborting black children after they are born.
It is their fellow ghetto dwellers who are aborting them, most of whom are of african descent.
But that ought to please liberal humanists. These are the kind of people ‘THEY” want less of to quote Associate United States Supreme Court Justice, Ruth ‘Buzzy’ Bader Ginnburger.
The down side for progressives is the ‘black on black’ violence does not produce revenue for them like the pp abortuaries.
But black women have become ‘cash cows’ for the leftists and they will milk them dry and then disacard them like pimps thin their stables.
Veazy is as clueless to his ‘usefull idiot’ status as yesterdays feminazis.