On Tuesday, anti-abortion activist Lila Rose’s group Live Action released a highly edited “undercover sting” video that claims Planned Parenthood is facilitating gender selective abortions.
Live Action claims U.S. census data and national vital statistics illustrate sex-selection is a growing problem in the United States but MediaMatters points out Centers for Disease Control data from 2008 that says 91.4% of abortions were performed before the 13th week of pregnancy, before gender is identifiable.
The following is a statement by Akiba Solomon, Colorlines.com’s gender reporter and columnist:
This sneak attack brought to you by Live Action’s Lila Rose (the female James O’Keefe) dovetails with tomorrow’s House vote on HR3451, the so-called Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA). To understand the timing of this video, lets examine the bill.
HR3451 claims to address the rising “sex-selection industry” and cites gender-based abortion tourism by “citizens of other countries.” As evidence of the “growing threat” of sex-selective abortion, the bill also cites a study by Columbia University economists who analyzed 2000 census data for U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents. Because sons outnumbered daughters, the economists concluded that their mothers must have practiced sex-selective abortion. This evidence is thin as hell, but PRENDA authors claim that “it strongly suggests that some Americans are exercising sex-selection abortion practices within the United States consistent with discriminatory practices common to their country of origin, or the country to which they trace their ancestry.”
Taken together, the bill and video are part of the same old right wing attempt to criminalize abortion under the mantle of equal rights and stoke white population anxiety. Instead of using the black genocide trope, PRENDA employs Yellow Peril dog whistles. The video supports this race-baiting legislation.
Live Action and PRENDA supporters are concern trolls. If they were, in fact, concerned about the lives of girls, they would focus on policies that support, say, living wages, jobs, affordable health care, quality public education and safety from gender-based violence rather than ginned up threats of sex-selective abortion.
Live Action isn’t very good at being sneaky about their “stings.” Planned Parenthood knew what they were doing weeks ago.
I just don’t know how you can claim to be working in people’s best interests when your primary strategy is (badly) lying to them.
If you have to lie in order to scare or manipulate people into supporting your ideology, there is something wrong with your ideology.
You shouldn’t have to ignore or deny reality in order to justify something and when you lie that’s exactly what you’re doing.
I’ve never had to make up lies or force myself to believe logically ridiculous things in order to justify why I am pro-choice. I’ve never had to co-opt things like slavery or the Holocaust to justify why I’m pro-choice.
The bottom line is that people will die (along with their fetuses) from illegal abortions if it is illegal. You either want pregnant people to die or you don’t. It’s not about fetuses, they die either way.
Love,
Rabble
(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
