Pro-Abortion Blog Web Site Censors Pro-Life Advocate’s Health Care Comments
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 1, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A prominent pro-abortion blog is coming under fire for censoring the public comments of a pro-life advocate who disabused one of its authors for making false claims about abortion funding in the health care bills.
The RH Reality Check web site, funded by the pro-abortion and Ted Turner-created United Nations Foundation, bills itself as a counter to the pro-life reporting of web sites like LifeNews.com.
The site is popular with abortion advocates and it outpaces those of pro-abortion groups like Emily’s List and NARAL in terms of visitors.
As a blog, RHRC normally provides a forum for response to the many inaccuracies and the sometimes hate-filled rhetoric against pro-life people found there.
But not when it comes to the problem of massive taxpayer-funding of abortions found in the health care bills in Congress.
RHRC writer Amanda Marcotte claims that since the Hyde Amendment is not overturned by any of the health care bills, even though it does not apply to the abortions that will be done in the government-run system, there must not be abortion funding.
She blasted pro-life advocates for saying the bills fund abortions "even though the federal government expressly forbids federal funding for elective abortion under the Hyde Amendment, and even though there’s not even a whiff of a hint that any potential bill would reverse the Hyde Amendment."
Marcotte claims the only people who believe the health care bills will fund abortions are those like a "hysterical wingnut screaming at a town hall."
Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee attempted to post a correction on the blog, but Marcotte repeatedly deleted it.
"I dared to comment on some distortions about abortion coverage in the health care legislation, posted by RHRC regular Amanda Marcotte," Johnson told LifeNews.com today.
"Marcotte posted a response to my initial comment. Unfortunately, her reply was heavy on invective and devoid of substantive response to the points of fact on which I had challenged her. I commented again, noting the deficiencies in her response," he said.
"Marcotte then deleted all the comments from her original post, and posted a new discourse in which she repeated some of the same misinformation (the baseless claim that the Hyde Amendment prohibits all federal funding of abortion, etc.)," Johnson continued.
"I replied to that one, too, and linked back to my original comments," Johnson said — but those comments have been deleted.
At press time, Johnson’s re-submitted comments appear to have withstood RH Reality Check’s censorship, but he doesn’t expect them to last long.
"If you want to be entertained by all this you better go read it fast, because apparently Ms. Marcotte does not like to be contradicted, and probably all of my comments will be deleted again in short order," Johnson concluded.
Related web sites:
National Right to Life – https://www.nrlc.org
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