Stop trying to silence anti-abortion activists
A bad, bad idea from Physicians for Reproductive Health.
This is a terrible idea from Physicians for Reproductive Health:
Dear reporters, journalists, editorial teams, and producers,
We are writing today with a big request: stop giving air-time to anti-abortion activists. As the undersigned over 600 providers of abortion care, people who have had abortions and will have abortions, abortion advocates, and individuals who work with the media regularly, we could not be more concerned for the safety and well-being of our communities, in part because of the misinformation, disinformation, and inflammatory threats shared and encouraged by anti-abortion activists in the media.
Now it’s true that journalists shouldn’t perpetuate misinformation in their reporting. But that’s not the entire point here:
You are, by way of asking them questions, legitimizing their answers. You are allowing hateful, dangerous harassers to build a base that encourages protesting at clinics, stalking and harming clinic staff and abortion providers, and online and in-person abuse of people who have abortions and those who support them in getting that care.
“You are, by way of asking them questions, legitimizing their answers.”
That’s not an attempt to stop misinformation. That’s an attempt to silence anti-abortion voices entirely in the media. And that’s a terrible idea.
Three reasons why:
It won’t work. If the point here is to keep pro-life activists from advancing their agenda — sorry, folks, that horse is already way out of the barn. Anti-abortion forces wield considerable (though not unlimited) political power, particularly in red state state legislatures. A lot of states have already passed abortion bans. A few more probably will. That will continue to be the case regardless even if those people are excluded. And the folks who want to hear from them aren’t always reading the mainstream media sources that this letter targets. Conservatives have their own media ecosystem. The word will get out.
It’s bad for the audience. Given that anti-abortion activists are pushing their agenda, silencing them just means that the people who do rely on mainstream media will be at a severe disadvantage understanding the arguments made by the pro-life side when it becomes relevant to their politics. This open letter would try to make dummies of a good chunk of the American citizenry. Bad idea.
It’s trying to science away stuff that isn’t just science. The letter signers try to use the power of knowledge to wave away the debate:
Medicine and science are not up for debate. Health care is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. And the fact is, abortion is not in the realm of theory or belief. Abortion belongs in health care, social services, and public health reporting.
But abortion doesn’t just belong in health care, social services, and public health reporting. It’s a moral issue. It involves a question that we’re probably never going to settle with finality: When does life start to carry the moral weight of full personhood? Science and health reporting can be marshaled to help understand possible answers to that question — and where pro-lifers are just wrong about the facts, that should be pointed out — but they probably can’t entirely resolve it. It’s a messy, complicated debate in which values are very much the point. And the letter signers want to remove the values from the equation.
They shouldn’t get to do that.
I’m pro-choice because of my values — not because of any confusion about the science. I truly believe that issues of women’s health and freedom are very much bound up in the question of abortion. Other people weigh the lives and choices of women/other pregnant people and unborn children/fetuses/etc. differently than I do. That will always be the case. Even if I could silence those people, I’m not sure forcing them underground would do much to advance my cause. I’m not much interested in trying.