Calling on the wisdom of the interwebs

[catsittingstill]

As you can imagine, in the wake of the shameful murder of Dr. Tiller, anti-abortion groups have been very much on my mind.  People keep telling me that most people who are anti-abortion are reasonable people.

So I'm looking for reasonable anti-abortion groups.   To my mind, to be reasonable, a group would have to 1) sincerely repudiate causing death, harm or property damage and expel members who do so 2) repudiate tactics of intimidation, including the practice of screaming at patients and staff of clinics that perform abortions 3) propose to allow exceptions to anti abortion laws for women whose lives or heath were in danger or women whose fetuses were already dead, would live only a short time after birth, or would suffer to a degree that most reasonable people would agree is unacceptable and 4) (very important) strongly support birth control, including the most effective methods.

I didn't think this was a very high bar for "reasonable."  However I've been trolling on Google and not finding much.  So far I've looked at:

Operation Rescue.  Long practice of intimidation.
American Life League.  Opposes birth control. 
Pro-Life Action League.  Opposes birth control.  Nutbars.
Colorado Right To Life "abortion providers should expect that violence begets violence."  Nutbars.
Priests for Life basically said Tiller had it coming.  Also oppose birth control.  Nutbars.
Colorado For Equal Rights. Opposes birth control (may not realize it yet, but since they want to define fertilized egg as person, and this means IUDs logically become murder, they do.  Whether they're proposing that all women be gynecologically searched for IUDs (wonder what *that* would do to the tourist trade) is unclear.  ) Nutbars.
The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.  Opposes birth control.  Nutbars.

Ones that *might* qualify.
National Right To Life.  Can you say Terri Schiavo? anti-stem cell research?  But insisting that they not ignore reality or hate science would be moving the goal posts at this point, and I agree that is not fair.
Justice For All.  Famed for squicky exhibits.  Believe that  " Likewise men need to assume a responsible voice for the welfare of their children they help conceive." which sounds a whole lot like they think that the man who impregnates a woman against her will should get to decide her future.  *And* they actually issue a handbook to their new members on how to simulate concern for women.   But I didn't insist that they not hate women, so again, can't move the goal posts now.

I've been hunting for hours and I'm a bit tired, so I'm turning to my friends list.  Can you tell me some anti-abortion groups who meet the "reasonable" standard above?

Comments

[musicmutt.livejournal.com]

I can't help you much with your search, but I have to say I agree with your stand on this. These groups seem to be founded on a fanaticism which has a tendency to be very narrow and unreasonable so it is the nutbars who tend to get all the press.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

Again, no real help, but I note that it would be possible for there to be lots of reasonable *people* by your definition and no reasonable organizations. The organizations exist to promote some agenda, which -- IMO -- almost always has a poor correlation with any kind of reasonableness.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I think Planned Parenthood, for example, is reasonable. So organizations on this issue *can* be reasonable. But for some reason I'm having a lot of trouble finding a reasonable Pro-Life organization.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

My mother uses the abortion litmus test for all of her voting, refusing to vote for candidates that support abortion choices for women.

She won't associate with any anti-abortion groups, because they are all "too extreme for me, dear." She finds their methods of shocking people with sickening pictures horrid, and picketing clinics rude and dangerous. She does support birth control, and the right for women to have access to it.

My cousin so firmly believes in right to life, that when her fetus was revealed to have only a brain stem during an ultrasound, and thus would die within hours or only days after birth, she still chose to carry her daughter to term. She does not belong to any anti-abortion groups either.

I'm not sure that there are any moderate anti-abortion groups that don't go by the label "Choice."

"Choose-life.org" is a group that gets states to have a "choose life" license plate drivers can buy to put on their cars. The funds go to help mothers with the expenses of pregnancy, and if wanted, set up adoptions for the babies. While there is still a message that abortion is "wrong," at least their funding go to positive outcomes rather than violent or repulsive ones.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

Choose-life.org doesn't seem to actively support any of the more extreme positions, but it does link to groups that oppose birth control.

Your mother sounds like the kind of person who would be interested in a reasonable anti-abortion group, if I could only find one.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

There's a reason you can't find the kind of group you're looking for: Anti-abortion groups (almost all religion-based) pretty much all oppose birth control as well as abortion because they're not nearly as much about saving the lives of the unborn as controlling the sex lives of the born, especially women. The idea is to make damn sure there are serious consequences for having extra-/pre-marital sex, and fight any attempt to take any of those consequences out of the equation. The goal is scaring everyone into behaving the way the groups want, i.e., celibacy unless married, and even then only for procreation. It's punishment of any sexuality they don't like with mandatory parenthood, as I've observed and said for years.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* it's using the law to spread theocratic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Dogma). There's a reason the First Amendment is *first*. And why neither you nor I care much for the Church.

[virgofolkie.livejournal.com]

>>Anti-abortion groups (almost all religion-based) pretty much all oppose birth control as well as abortion because they're not nearly as much about saving the lives of the unborn as controlling the sex lives of the born, especially women.

Hear hear!! Exactly what I've been saying for years. I'm no rocket scientist; but it didn't take much deductive reason to figure that one out. And don't forget, most of these same people/groups oppose homosexuality for exactly the same reason: it places sex outside the control of civil and/or religious authorities...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No.

This has been another installment of....

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

..."One-Word AnswerMan"?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

:) No, as Atrios puts is: "Simple Answers To Simple Questions".

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

oh, I like One-Word-Answer Man....
sounds like a song!

*innocent look*
what?!?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Any organization which lobbies to restrict freedom is not a reasonable organization, period paragraph.

As for moving the goal posts, you have the right to re-formulate what you're after based on subsequent input. Learned that when I joined the LP way the heck back...

The choice a woman makes is, inalienably, her own. She may choose to consult with her doctor, whoever else was involved (putting it as inclusively as possible), and whoever or whatever she may believe in, if anything... but she is the one who has to live with the choice, who may well die from the choice, or worse yet, IMNASHO, have her life destroyed and yet live, and thus it is *soley* her decision. Anybody that wants to f*** with that choice... just, no. As cflute would say, hell no with damnation sprinkles.

If there was a group that promoted adoption as an option but did not get political about it, and furthermore did like the Dave Thomas Foundation and got actively involved in helping secure good placements for orphan children, I could see that, if not get behind it. Once you cross the line and start restricting choice at the point of a gun (and let's be honest, when you use the law you're ultimately using the threat of force), that's when my own trigger finger starts to get itchy.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Any organization which lobbies to restrict freedom is not a reasonable organization, period paragraph.

Um, then where does that leave organizations who, for example, lobby to keep people whose land is in the watershed for a large city from using large-scale cyanide extraction of gold on their land?

Not that I believe that restricting abortion is reasonable, but I'm not sure I buy into the contention that nobody should restrict anybody from doing anything.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The trick is, your right to swing ends at my nose. The function of government is to step in when the actions of one harm, or prima facie would harm, others. (I think it goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far, but that's the basic idea.) And, frankly, using cyanide to extract gold isn't the issue. It's what's *done* with the cyanide when the extraction is done with that's the issue... and that is obviously a safety problem and thus comes under promoting the general Welfare.

(I'm of the general belief that dangerous stuff shouldn't be prohibited *if* it can be done with a modicum of safety. See also, motorcycles. Or *driving*, for pity's sake. Above a certain level of danger, especially to others, training would be mandatory, for public safety. Motorcycles is just at the level where training is - and should be - not quite mandatory but highly recommended. Got mine. :)

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

See, the people you talked to said that many or most people who are antiabortion are reasonable people. They didn't say GROUPS. And I too know some reasonable people (or *otherwise* reasonable, anyhow. I think their views on that point are idiotic superstitions, but they pretty much have fully functional brains and respect women) who oppose abortion in most circumstances. Those people do not belong to any of the groups you cite above.

By and large, reasonable people don't join crusades. Fanatics join crusades.

Reasonable people have opinions, argue about their opinions, vote based on opinions that matter to then, maybe even write letters to politicians and work to get politicians elected who promise to do things in support of their view. Maybe when someone else has a rally in a general public space, they'll go to that. But for most people, it pretty much stops there. I consider myself very politically active, meaning I write blog entries on Kos and other forums, and spend weekends canvasing and phone banking for politicians I like starting around August before a November election, maybe a letter to the editor or two. Most people don't do that much. They talk and they vote, if even that.

I'm pro-choice, but I am not a crusader. I don't picket Catholic churches and harass people who are just trying to go to mass.

Single-issue groups are stacked with crusaders. If you're turning there looking for people with moderate viewpoints, you're looking in the wrong place.

EDIT: I'll go further and say that there may even be some members of some of those crusade groups, maybe even a plurality of them, who go with the basic pro-life position, who do not really approve of the extremity of the organizations's principles or tactics and might tone it down or change it if it was up to them, but who sit down and keep their objections to themselves because the leaders of the organization are loud and vocal and will brook no disagreement. A lot of crusade groups have loud, charismatic leaders who insist on rigid loyalty and who think of themselves as an indispensible component of the cause itself. A lot of the biggest organizations have a lot of "members" who do nothing more than send membership dues and read the newsletter, but who have zero input on the organization's principles or activities. For example, the NRA has many, many members who joined because they own guns, but who disagree with the most extreme public positions of the NRA. AARP has members who join just because of their age and have little interest in the age-specific political advocacy of AARP. Some members of the ACLU care very much about the rights of suspects and nothing at all about religious civil liberties, or the other way around. So just because Operation Rescue has (mumble) large number of members doesn't mean that all, or even a majority of them, think just like Randall Terry.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm pro-choice, but I am not a crusader. I don't picket Catholic churches and harass people who are just trying to go to mass.

The very most pro-Choice people I know of don't picket Catholic churges and harass people going to mass. I don't *think*, anyway.

Which I guess is a basic moral difference between the pro-Choice and anti-abortion groups.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The Catholic church, perhaps not, but if somebody called a picket to Ken Hutcherson's Antioch Baptist Church (virulently anti-gay and 99.44% likely to be anti-abortion too)), I would go in a heartbeat.

I think maybe part of it is that pro-choicers tend to be somewhat more independent than the other side, and thus getting a picket going requires herding cats rather than sheep. You've written about cats; you know the difference. :)

But, no, I do think that giving them a dose of their own medicine is a good idea. I just don't have the time to *organize* the darn thing.

Hmmmmmmm....

Perhaps it is that I have a life? *snark-only-serious*

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I think you'd mostly find the moderates in the more liberal christian churches, but I am *so* not an expert on christian sects.

[danceswithlife]

One of the things I found interesting this week watching Olbermann and especially Maddow, report on the death of Tiller was that they kept emphasizing that he was killed for performing *legal* procedures. What they don't seem to get is that for the types of groups you name that is a big part of the problem: something they see as murder is legal. They honestly see themselves on a par with those who opposed other "legal" forms of murder--such as the holocaust. For example, many people mourn the fact that Hitler didn't die a lot earlier as a result of various assassination attempts.

I don't agree with this position at all since my working decision is that a fetus has legal rights only when it can exist outside the mother's womb without extreme technological intervention to keep it alive. Not a perfect definition. But I pay medical claims for a living and understand what the issues are for extremely preterm babies who are saved.

Most liberals also don't seem to understand that they fuel the efforts of extreme pro choice groups with what seem to me to be inherent contradictions about pregnancy. If it isn't murder if a mother aborts a fetus then it shouldn't be murder if it dies as a result of the actions of someone else. What that seems to come down to is it's murder if the mother wants to have the baby, and not murder if she doesn't. Some DAs would even up the charge to two attempted murders if the woman didn't know she was pregnant. That doesn't mean that I think that miscarriages as a result of intentional or unintentional acts of another shouldn't have consequences--after all, the mother is usually also at risk by whatever action caused the miscarriage--but prosecuting people who cause a woman to miscarry for manslaughter or murder sends an extremely mixed message.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Most liberals also don't seem to understand that they fuel the efforts of extreme pro choice groups with what seem to me to be inherent contradictions about pregnancy.

If the contradictions about pregnancy are inherent, then I don't understand why it's the liberal groups' fault? In other words, why is it that you say liberals are "fueling the efforts of extreme pro choice groups?"

What that seems to come down to is it's murder if the mother wants to have the baby, and not murder if she doesn't.

I would be inclined to suggest that anti-abortion folks call it murder either way, and when the woman obviously wanted the baby, everyone else is mad enough at the person who assaulted/murdered her not to call the anti-abortion people on it. These widely differing attitudes result in a group decision that it's murder if she wanted it and not murder if she doesn't, but it doesn't actually mean that pro-choice people promote that point of view.

Perhaps we should take a sterner line against calling this sort of assault murder, but it will take a pretty cold-blooded person to do that in the face of the grieving victim(s).

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Ya know, that sort of prosecution struck me as fundamentally stupid -- I assumed that it was being done by someone who was anti-abortion as a sort of back-door attempt to dislodge Roe v. Wade...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I think so too. And the anti-abortion groups certainly gloated over it and invoke it at every turn.

Like I said above, I think normal people were so upset over the Laci Peterson case they didn't fight that characterization the way they should have.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

My advice, which may not be appropriate for you: Save your blood pressure and stop the search.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I am sincerely interested in finding such an organization to direct pro-Life people to, because right now, all the organizations they have to donate to or work for are nutbars.

It is my belief that when we can separate the reasonable people from the nutbars in the anti-abortion movement, the nutbars will wither for lack of funds.

Seeing vandalizing, arson-setting, stalking, lying, murdering bastards wither for lack of funds is my heart's desire right now.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Then how about directing them to adoption agencies (which are, by definition, alternatives to abortion)?

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Ah. THAT motivation I can understand and agree with 100%.

[howeird]

I don't think reasonable people who are against abortion would join a group. They probably watch talk shows, so to reach them you would want to appear on talk shows, which probably means writing a book. Maybe a biography of Tiller.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It is not so much that I want to reach them, it's that I want to have some *reasonable* groups to advise them to direct their attention/funds/volunteer efforts to.

Otherwise they may settle for the nutbars because that is as close as they can get.