The idea of being paid to advance the sanctity of life is foreign to most online pro-life citizen journalists and commentators.
Not that being financially reimbursed for providing this work is wrong. Paul in I Timothy 5:18 wrote, "For the Scripture says, 'Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,' and 'The worker deserves his wages.'"
It's just that the lack thereof doesn't keep our writers from performing what they consider a vocation.
But quality online pro-death advocacy would be pretty much nonexistent sans financial reward.
Knowing that behind the advancement of illicit sexual behavior is an industry raking in billions of dollars annually from the sale of contraceptives and abortion makes it too easy to see why online journalistic promotion would be a natural marketing tool.
The Reproductive Health Reality Check blog is but one example of pro-death pay to play, a "campaign," according to the United Nations Foundation, its financial backer "launched in 2006 to harness the power of new media to offer a reality check on the misconceptions about reproductive health … [a] rebuttal arsenal."
Recall that media mogul Ted Turner created UNF in 1997 with a $1 billion pledge.
All this brings us to a remarkable August 21 article in RH Reality Check by Elizabeth Westley, Francine Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, originally published in the journal, Contraception.
The topic was the failure of the morning-after pill to live up to its rosy forecast coupled with an appeal for donors not to abandon its advocacy, nonetheless. Excerpts (emphases mine):
… Recent analyses suggesting that emergency contraception is not as effective in reducing unwanted pregnancy rates at a population level as we once hoped seem to have put the brakes on funding and have revived the original arguments that emergency contraception is "not effective enough" to be promoted as an option and that women are "abusing" it, using it repeatedly instead of using other more effective methods. …
Our expectations for EC's effectiveness were biased upwards by an early estimate that expanding access to emergency contraception could dramatically reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy and subsequent abortion. This estimate made a compelling story and is likely a key reason why donors and others were willing to support efforts to expand access to EC. Now that we realize that this was an overly optimistic calculation …
While the exact effectiveness of emergency contraceptive pills is difficult to determine (estimates range from 59% to 94%), we know that using emergency contraception is more effective than doing nothing. … When we realized that the typical effectiveness of condoms and pills was much lower than their theoretical effectiveness, did we tell women to stop using them in favor of more effective IUDs? ...
Effectiveness also has been the main driver behind the push to use emergency contraception to "bridge" women to other methods. The idea behind "bridging" is to use the lure of emergency contraception to then get women hooked into a more effective method. …
We urge the reproductive health and donor communities to not give up on emergency contraception just because it is not proving to be as effective at the population level as we had once hoped. …
We also urge the reproductive health community to continue to learn from the experience of promoting EC. We need to find out more about what women like about emergency contraception and why they are willing to accept its lower effectiveness and high cost compared with other methods. …
Do you see why I called the article remarkable? Lots of revelations.
The first is an open admission that the industry pays friendlies to promote widespread access of the morning-after pill, or MAP.
Next is the industry expected the "lure" of the MAP to bring it ongoing business through monthly sales of the lucrative birth-control pill. Women are likely bypassing pill pushers like Planned Parenthood altogether by purchasing MAPs at neighborhood pharmacies.
A third revelation is the authors' admission of almost all that pro-lifers have always contended were problems with widespread access of the MAP: It is ineffective, it is being abused, and it is circumventing oversight by health-care providers.
The biggest jaw-dropper was the audacious request to continue promoting widespread MAP availability with basically this rationale: "Women should be able to choose any contraceptive they want, even if it's ineffective."
This showed an appalling disregard not only for women's health but also for the unplanned pregnancies they claim out the other side of their mouth they want to avoid.
But we already knew that.
Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: WorldNetDaily
Publish Date: August 26, 2009
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