Indicative of the way the MSM have all but ignored the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, is that after waiting, it seemed interminably, for any news agency report on the March - having watched the March and its preps on EWTN (impossible to watch the March and listen to the participants without being moved to tears again and again) - the first report that came out was this one from Al-Jazeera, which I found quite objective, so I have decided to lead off this post with it...
Anti-abortion march
held in US capital
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 25 - Tens of thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators have converged on the US Supreme Court to protest its landmark decision 40 years ago this week that legalised abortion in America.
Organisers of the annual "March for Life" on the National Mall in Washington said a record crowd surpassed last year's turnout of 400,000, even with Friday’s sub-freezing temperatures.
Cheering them on from the Vatican was Pope Benedict XVI, who sent his best wishes via Twitter.
"I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life," he tweeted on his @Pontifex account.
Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of the Roe versus Wade decision, in which the highest court in the US ruled that abortion was a strictly private matter between a woman and her doctor.
The 1973 decision is seen by the pro-abortion camp as a breakthrough for women, but the anti-abortion movement - with support from the Roman Catholic and conservative Evangelical churches - sees itself as rapidly gaining ground.
"Being pro-life is the new normal," Jeanne Monahan, the new president of March for Life after the August 2012 death of its founder Nellie Gray, said on MSNBC a few hours before the demonstration.
She cited a recent Gallup poll in which 50 percent of respondents identified themselves as being against abortion - in contrast to 41 percent who believed in a woman's right to choose on the issue, down from 56 percent in 1995.
Abortion, she said, "is the human rights abuse of today”.
The March for Life usually takes place on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, but it was pushed back three days this year to accommodate Monday's second term swearing-in ceremony for President Barack Obama.
Snow began to fall as the crowd - which included a remarkably large number of young women - reached the Supreme Court after winding its way around the Capitol from the National Mall.
Protesters from as far afield as Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and Oklahoma waved placards reading "Defend life", "Abortion: murder by appointment" and "Save the baby humans".
"I just think abortion is wrong," high school student Lacy Craig, 17, of Wellington, Kansas, told AFP news agency. "One of my friends is pregnant and I cannot imagine her not having her baby."
"I totally understand why people [terminate a pregnancy]," Craig added, "but I just don't think it's the right choice. It's not. It doesn't help."
Lutheran pastor Paul Herter, 58, from Adrian, Michigan, said there have been "some big pro-life advances" in recent years - a reference to legislation at the state level that critics say discourage women from having abortions.
"But by and large Roe versus Wade remains the big stumbling block," he said.
"Why we are here is to try to persuade and to educate, so that people understand that life begins at conception and that we should try to treasure human life from conception to natural death and all stages in between."
An unstructured and random montage of available photos from the March yesterday - I have not seen a single photograph that shows the size of the march as one could appreciate it from the live TV coverage yesterday:
March for Life uses social media
to counter lack of news coverage
By Alex Murashko
January 26, 2013
Participants in this year's March for Life, marking the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, seemed less bothered by the mainstream media's lack of coverage of the estimated half-million people descending on Washington, D.C. to demonstrate against abortion on Friday. That's because they relied heavily on social media to help shine the spotlight on the movement.
Outside the march, supporters of the pro-life movement were not deterred either. Pope Benedict XVI gave a shout-out on Twitter in nine languages.
"I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life," Benedict tweeted. The Pope has 2.5 million followers on Twitter in just six-week time since he began using the social media heavyweight.
"We have the biggest social media movement online for the pro-life movement educating almost a million people a week with the truth about human life and abortion," Lila Rose of Action Network, a pro-life investigative journalism group, told Fox News.
"Our Facebook at over 430,000 is bigger than Planned Parenthood's Facebook and they're a billion dollar abortion chain."
While TV reports on the march were scarce, a quick Google search Friday evening showed minimal mainstream online media coverage as well. The news of Burt Reynold's bout with the flu that landed him in the hospital took the top-center slot at CNN.com, while the March for Life story was nowhere to be found on its homepage.
Apparently, even the intense chatter from pro-life supporters on Twitter wasn't enough to convince most newsrooms of the newsworthiness simply because of the large number of protesters alone.
"@ABC @NBCNews @CNN @FoxNews @msnbc Hot News Tip: Quick there are 500,000 people Marching on the Nations Capitol #MarchforLife #RealNews," tweeted @CatholicMomHunt (DH) on Friday.
Conservative columnist Katie Pavlich tweeted, "Hi @NBC, there are thousands of people marching for life today in 15 degree weather. Where are you?"
There was plenty of analysis from conservative writers trying to answer the question as to why the media continues to put the pro-life movement on the back burner.
"It doesn't get analyzed, or portrayed as part of any broader social trend. The press doesn't ask what causes it to remain so strong, even after forty years of being sternly lectured that it's fighting for a lost cause," writes John Hayward in a column published in Human Events.
Pro-lifers give cheerful interviews to news anchors who would feel more comfortable sitting down with the dictators of North Korea or Iran; they wave happily into cameras held by quivering hands.
Media organizations that swoon when leftist organizations quote dubious statistics in some 'noble' cause – climate change, gun control – scowl at the simple observation by pro-lifers that America is missing 55 million people due to the post-Roe abortion regime."
Rich Noyes, in a Media Research Center story published early Friday, wrote that the abortion issue has divided Americans for the past four decades and journalists have consistently come down on the pro-abortion side of this debate.
Noyes quoted
Boston Globe legal reporter Ethan Bronner as saying to the Los Angeles Times in 1990: "I think that when abortion opponents complain about a bias in newsrooms against their cause, they're absolutely right. Opposing abortion, in the eyes of most journalists...is not a legitimate, civilized position in our society."
Journalists have "routinely characterized the pro-life stance as retrograde or anti-woman," Noyes points out. During last year's presidential campaign, "Team Obama took advantage of the media's pro-abortion bias to construct a phony 'war on women' attack on conservatives," he states.
Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin's human-powered Twitter aggregator, Twitchy Media, published several prominent posts under its "Social media fills the role the MSM won't as hundreds of thousands #MarchForLife in DC" headline.
Perhaps best summing up much of the tone for the day was "future priest" @Sacerdotus on Twitter:
"If @cnn @msnbc and other media outlets air complete coverage of the #marchforlife then that means this cold weather shows hell froze over."
Youth rally and prayer vigil at the Verizon Center in DC on the eve of the March gives an idea of the youth participation...
March for Life leaders see
growing youth participation
By Michael Gryboski
January 25, 2013
WASHINGTON – At the annual March for Life event at the National Mall, individuals long involved with the observance have spoken of an increasingly young audience for their message.
Tom Hogan, a board member with the March for Life Education Defense Fund, had been involved "on and off since the beginning," with military service abroad preventing his participation every year. Hogan, who is also a member of the Knights of Columbus, told The Christian Post that in the past few years the crowd has been getting younger.
"We noticed in the last few years a lot of younger people are coming," said Hogan, who noted that about 22,000 mostly young people would be coming in from a mass held at the Verizon Center. "We look positively at the young people that are pro-life that are coming here and that's the wave of the future."
Fr. Frank A. Pavone, national director for Priests for Life and president of the National Pro-life Religious Council, had been attending the annual March for Life since he was a teenager. Pavone told CP that the cold weather and the re-election of a notably pro-choice President Barack Obama have not hindered the March's efforts.
"This has been a testimony to the strength of this movement that not only have the people persevered but the numbers have grown and they've grown younger," said Pavone. "Despite any kind of bad weather, despite any other obstacles… they come, they come in strength; you see a great spirit of joy and optimism here as well."
Pavone said that the March for Life "works on the same dynamic" as the Civil Rights Movement, as it rallies people "to stand up for the fundamental right to life."
"People have to look at what abortion is," said Pavone, who talked about a recently-created Priests for Life website called exposeabortion.com, which provides quotes about the abortion issue.
"Everyone can advance the cause this year by coming face-to-face with what abortion is and spreading some of these quotes which will at least help people understand what we are talking about if it won't convert them altogether."
As with previous years, the March for Life featured many prominent public figures as guest speakers, including elected officials like Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. "I have a question for those who don't respect and won't protect life: Can a nation long endure that does not respect the sanctity of life?" asked Paul.
"Can a nation conceived in liberty carry its head high if it denies protection to the youngest and most vulnerable of its citizens? Can a country founded on God-given rights continue to thrive without understanding that life is a precious gift from our Creator?"
Sen. Paul called for those gathered to be part of a great "revival" for the country centered on justice and compassion, seeing the present state of the nation as being in moral peril.
"I believe that great nations and great civilizations spring from a people who have a moral compass," said Paul. "Our nation is adrift; adrift in a wilderness".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2013 21:13]