There has been a spate of stories about Occupy Wall Street protesters disrupting pro-life events (on one occasion, they reportedly showered a group of female Catholic students with condoms). All this has led Ben Johnson to ask, “Why does Occupy Wall Street support Big Abortion?”:
The American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP) International has released a new report showing that 27 percent of the CEOs at Planned Parenthood offices have a base salary of $200,000 a year or more, not including bonuses or other forms of incentive pay. The national organization’s president, Cecile Richards, makes more than $350,000, placing her safely in the top one percent of income earners. Occupy Wall Street may be the 99 percent, but its beneficiaries are not.
OWS claims to oppose taxpayer bailouts of huge corporations. Yet Planned Parenthood is a $1 billion a year industry that received $487.4 million in taxpayer funds in 2010. These young people protested, in part, to “protect” its federal subsidy.
Then there is the question of the abortionists’ business practices. Whatever the merits of the movement’s other targets, the abortion industry embodies the worst corporate behavior OWS could imagine in its most feverish nightmare. Abortionists lie about their service. (“It’s safe, legal, and rare.”) They mislead women about the unborn child whose limbs they will sever. (“It’s just a blob of tissue.”) They intimidate and sometimes force women to have abortions. (For but one example, read the allegations against Alberto Hodari). They often injure and occasionally kill their unsuspecting patients due to lax regulations and lack of enforcement. With the aid of a compliant media, they cover up the long-term physical and psychological damage their service causes their clients, who are disproportionately poor and minority women . . .
More here.
February 1st, 2012 | 10:34 am
Because they believe that the anti-abortion movement is some big conspiracy of the 1% to oppress the 99%. I suspect that if it were possible to determine the contribution stats of pro-life vs. pro-choice organizations by donor income, they might be surprised.
What seems to be happening here is that the OWS types identify anything they don’t personally like as the fault of the 1% and therefore a fit subject for their movement. Facts have little to do with it.
February 1st, 2012 | 11:58 am
Because they’re youthful, uninformed Leftists?
February 1st, 2012 | 4:42 pm
Because the only freedom they really value starts at the waist and ends at the knees?
February 1st, 2012 | 6:04 pm
Because, like the Tea Party, they are capable of holding more than one idea in their small heads at one time. The Tea Partiers, after all, managed to attach to their small government agenda socially conservative items that have little to do with and even sometimes contradict a small government agenda.
February 2nd, 2012 | 5:19 pm
What seems to be happening here is that the OWS types identify anything they don’t personally like as the fault of the 1% and therefore a fit subject for their movement. Facts have little to do with it.
Leftism has been actively cultivating appeals to argumentum ad misericordium – the idea that short-term emotions are much more important than long term consequences. They get around the irrational nature of this by first establishing that they are the smart ones and their opponents are the dumb ones, so it’s impossible that the thoughts thunk by the “smart ones” could be irrational – therefore they may be as irrational as they wish, and it does not matter how reasonable the reply: if you are one of the dumb ones, your answer is dumb no matter what.
The Tea Partiers, after all, managed to attach to their small government agenda socially conservative items that have little to do with and even sometimes contradict a small government agenda.
If you are referring to things like abortion, then you are incorrect – your error becomes immediately obvious when you correctly apply what Tea Party members actually believe about government, what it is for and what it should do, instead of holding Tea Party members up to your standard of what you think they ought to believe.
February 3rd, 2012 | 10:41 am
“your error becomes immediately obvious when you correctly apply what Tea Party members actually believe about government, what it is for and what it should do, instead of holding Tea Party members up to your standard of what you think they ought to believe”
I’m just reporting what I’ve been told. The wing of my family that lives in Georgia was enthusiastic about the Tea Party early on and joined a local group. They like small government and are economic conservatives, atheist, anti-gay, and pro-choice. They have complained loudly about what they describe as the religious right takeover of the Tea Party. Friends nearer home here in Texas report similarly. These friends are religious and pro-life but are still unhappy about the moral positions the Tea Party started to support. They want government out of everything.
February 4th, 2012 | 5:47 am
I’m just reporting what I’ve been told.
Well, then take the time to educate yourself before you make statements.
Libertarians, not the Tea Party, are the ones who advocate for the government doing as little as possible
It strikes me as an illogical position, since in practice it means that sometimes – namely when it favors them – it is the business of government to prevent crime and enforce contracts, but at other times – in other circumstances – it is viewed as a violation of liberty (meaning theirs) for the government to prevent crime or enforce contracts. That isn’t “liberty” so much as it’s simply a government built around the needs of white upper middle class males.
February 13th, 2012 | 10:28 am
“Well, then take the time to educate yourself before you make statements. Libertarians, not the Tea Party, are the ones who advocate for the government doing as little as possible”
You’ll have to take up that question with my family members who belong to the Tea Party and make these claims.
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