A Newsweek blog post has been getting hammered over the weekend for a rather desultory journalistic attempt to describe last Friday’s March for Life and the pro-life movement at large.
“Who’s missing at the ‘Roe v. Wade’ anniversary demonstrations? Young women,” Newsweek reporter Krista Gesaman posted in the site’s politics blog, The Gaggle ... five hours before the March commenced.
Most puzzling is Gesaman’s reliance for her thesis on the quote of one officer in the District police department’s planning unit:
“The organizers are getting older, and it’s more difficult for them to walk a long distance,” says Stanley Radzilowski, an officer in the planning unit for the Washington, D.C., police department. A majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case, he says.
So this raises the question: where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions? Likely, they’re at home.
Ironically, Gesaman’s assertion came the same day we released poll data showing that nearly six in 10 young Americans believe abortion to be morally wrong.
Either both Gesaman and her source at the police department have never been to the March for Life, or Newsweek just won itself the 2010 prize for most patently biased and untrue reporting on the event – and that’s beating out a long list of other nominations, as Stephen Greydanus bemoans at the National Catholic Register.
After all, when it comes to the March’s demographics – and judging whether or not, indeed, young women are staying home – the images speak for themselves. As nearly every contributor to the growing list of comments on Gesaman’s post notes incredulously, no one who witnesses the March – regardless of their position on abortion – can escape the fact that the crowd is overwhelmingly made up of youth and young adults.
But perhaps the best response to Gesaman’s reporting – and her condescending description of pro-life leaders, for whom the supposed complacency of modern young women “might be hard ... to understand” – comes from a Washington Post columnist who actually did attend the March for Life and witness the demographics in question.
Written from the viewpoint of a Roe v. Wade support, the column is a must-read in its entirety:
I went to the March for Life rally Friday on the Mall expecting to write about its irrelevance. Isn't it quaint, I thought, that these abortion protesters show up each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, even though the decision still stands after 37 years. What's more, with a Democrat in the White House likely to appoint justices who support abortion rights, surely the Supreme Court isn't going to overturn Roe in the foreseeable future.
How wrong I was. The antiabortion movement feels it's gaining strength, even if it's not yet ready to predict ultimate triumph, and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous.
“... I was especially struck by the large number of young people among the tens of thousands at the march,” Robert McCartney writes. “It suggests that the battle over abortion will endure for a long time to come.”
Does complacency exist in regards to the abortion issue? Yes, McCartney writes – but on the other side.
“Activists who support abortion rights conceded that there’s less energy among young people on their side of the debate,” McCartney reports, going on to quote 20-year-old Amanda Pelletier, co-director of the abortion rights group at American University.
“Unfortunately, I feel my generation is a little complacent,” Pelletier said. “It just doesn’t seem to be a very hip issue.”
Pelletier, McCartney notes, was one of the fewer than 100 protesters in support of Roe v. Wade who turned out in front of the Supreme Court that day.
McCartney’s insights plow Gesaman’s assumptions into the ground. The abortion issue is losing relevance for young women today, the Newsweek post suggests. The emotional arguments that propelled Roe v. Wade belonged to an earlier generation. McCartney, on the other hand, describes an encounter with a female, Catholic youth minister in Pennsylvania whose mother underwent an abortion prior to having her. She still “can’t listen to a vacuum cleaner without shuddering,” the interviewee said.
According to Planned Parenthood’s own research arm, nearly a quarter of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion. Half of all women seeking abortions are younger than age 25. With that kind of rate, you’d better believe that young women today know someone who has been affected by abortion.
“When feelings run that raw, this issue could stir controversy for 37 years more,” McCartney concludes.
At the March, signs proclaiming “We Are the Pro-Life Generation” waved proudly on Constitution Avenue. The KofC-Marist poll gives credence to that claim.
That might be news to those who would rather believe that the moral issue of abortion is at a deadlock, if not irrelevant today. But we know differently.
-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor
FWIW She has posted a response...a rather wishy washy one at that.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/01/25/reaction-to-the-blogosphere-about-roe-v-wade-article.aspx
Posted by: Jbrown | January 25, 2010 at 05:04 PM