Topic: Media Research Center
The anti-abortion extremists at the Media Research Center unsurprisingly supported efforts to make passage of a constitutional amendment in Ohio supporting abortion rights more difficult -- and when that failed, they tried to the amendment itself. Chief extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg whined about the amendment getting enough signatures from voters to make the ballot in a July 5 post:
I don’t know what Ohio is typically known for - but I do know that it seems its residents want it to be known as a land of abortion.
On Wednesday morning a truckload of petitions appeared at the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Signatures urged for all pro-life laws in Ohio to be removed, facilitating the state to become an entirely anti-life state.
The coalition who initiated the petitions, Ohioans United for Reproductive Freedom, want an amendment to be added on the November ballot to enshrine abortion into the Ohio constitution. This would, in essence, make abortion legal in the state up until birth.
The Ohio Right to Life group released a statement following news of the arrivals of the numerous boxes with an estimated 700,000 signatures advocating for dead babies.
Mandelburg went on to complain that the signature collection process went pretty much like all of them do:
ACLU Ohio supposedly collected signatures for roughly 12 weeks and reached all 88 Ohio counties yet, its unlikely all those people knew what they were signing. One signature collector evenmadmittedthat he wa s knowingly collecting invalid signatures so he could get paid.
It's heartbreaking that so many Ohio citizens blindly signed something either without knowledge of what it actually supports or just to help someone “get paid.”
It’s also heartbreaking to realize that many Ohio citizens knew the damage an amendment like this would cause and knowingly signed it.
Of course, as any promoter of ballot initiatives knows, you collect signatures over and above the number required to get on the ballot because some will inevitably be invalid for whatever reason.
After the initiative made it on the ballot, anti-abortion activist Republicans quickly rushed its own initiative to the ballot as a countermeasure -- to raise the initative approval threshold to 60 percent. Kevin Tober spent an Aug. 8 post complaining that it was accurately pointed out thatthe attempted change to the approval threshold was designed to thwart the will of POhio residents on reproductive rights:
As the polls were set to close in the special election in Ohio to decide whether to raise the ballot initiative threshold to 60 percent in order to amend the state constitution, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News each ran segments worrying that if the ballot initiative was successful, it would make it harder for abortion advocates to protect so-called “abortion rights.”
On ABC’s World News Tonight, fill-in anchor Mary Bruce hyped the “huge turnout in Ohio for a special election.” She then used the leftist lingo “abortion rights” and worried that they “could be at stake.”
[...]
Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, the highly partisan Ali Vitali was given the assignment to report from Ohio. Much like Bruce and Presha, Vitali was just as obnoxious: “High turnout for a highly charged special election that could determine the fate of abortion rights here.”
“It's all against the national backdrop of Republicans in red states losing referendums on abortion in the past year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,” Vitali proclaimed.
She then ended her report similarly to the way Presha did by setting the media narrative early that if the ballot question failed, it meant the pro-life cause was in trouble nationally: “Results in this typically red state will provide a road map for other states, either for future efforts to stymie abortion access or to paint Republicans as out of step on this issue.”
Democrat activists in the media like Vitali would do everything in their power to make sure that happened.
Tober was silent on Republican activists in the media pushing thse anti-abortion measures.
That attempt failed, and the MRC turned its attention to trying to shame anyone who supports reproductive rights. Mandelburg returned for an Oct. 6 post touting how "A bipartisan group of black pastors signed a letter Tuesday urging Ohio voters to oppose a measure that would enshrine abortion into the state Constitution." That included rehashing of old, false attacks against the founder of Planned Parenthood:
The letter also brought up the racist regime that is run by Planned Parenthood. Years ago, eugenicist Margaret Sanger set up Planned Parenthood locations purposefully in minority neighborhoods, targeting black babies “before they entered the world.”
As we've documented, there's no evidence that Sanger had any racist motive in establishing Planned Parenthood, and the majority of abortion clinics are actually located in white neighborhoods. But those lies adhere to Mandelburg's narrative, so no fact-checking was forthcoming from her.
Mandelburg spent a Nov. 1 post claiming that "more than 12 churches have experienced incidents of vandalism along with schools and cemeteries" in Ohio, going on to sneer:
Pro-aborts have a tendency to throw temper tantrums when they feel that their so-called “right” to kill kids is being threatened.
Issue 1 is an extreme pro-abort law that, if passed, would allow abortion up to the time of birth. Naturally, pro-lifers are opposed to this ballot initiative. No child in the womb should be killed at any point, never mind at a point where said child can feel pain, can live outside the womb on his or her own, has fully functioning limbs and is fully developed. But that's what pro-aborts in Ohio want.
Pro-Abort Ohioans want residents to vote yes on Issue 1 so bad that they took it upon themselves to vandalize and attack religious related buildings as a way of protest.
Meanwhile, Mandelburg was silent about an fellow anti-abortion extremist who burned down an abortoin clinic in Wyoming.
Tim Graham spent a Nov. 3 post complaining that an Ohio Republican politician who claimed without evidence that the Ohio initiative would supercede parental consent laws:
Take a look at the actual language of Issue One, and you can see it's quite easy to see it's for abortion rights for all "individuals," in any trimester, which would include 12-year-old girls.
[...]
So how hard is it to argue this would enable 12-year-old girls with 21-year-old boyfriends (or even rapists) from "exercising this right"? There's no mention of parental consent. [PolitiFact reporter Adam] Edelman and his cast of "nonpartisans" underline that Ohio already has a parental-consent provision for "abortion care."
Graham then whined that "Edelman, like other 'fact checkers,' is trying to declare conservative spin as 'false,' just as they claimed you couldn't say in 1992 that Bill Clinton would raise taxes -- and he promptly did." Graham didn't explain why someone's opinion can't be fact-checked when there is evidence to prove it wrong.
The next day, Alex Christy grumbled at the existence of pro-choice Republicans was reported:
Next Tuesday, Ohioans will decide whether they want abortion to be a constitutionally-protected right and to help the pro-abortion side out, Friday’s edition of NBC Nightly News interviewed a trio of Republicans who tried to claim that being pro-abortion is conservative.
Former state lawmaker Joan Lawrence stated that “I think it's up to the individual, not the government to decide what to do about a pregnancy.”
She also declared that, “It's not a partisan issue, it really isn't. And Republicans are making it a -- trying to make it a partisan issue.”
Christy didn't prove any of these people wrong, but instead ranted: "Republicans are pro-life and conservativism will never be pro-abortion, just like NBC will never do a puff piece on pro-life Democrats who think abortion without limitations shows how their party is out of touch."
Graham grumbled about another fact-chec in a Nov. 5 post, annoyed in particular by the writer noting that abortions later in pregnancy — what anti-abortion groups often call 'late-term" abortions'": "It's always amusing to see leftists finding it weird you would describe a late-term abortion as a 'late term abortion." What's it supposed to be called, 'a well-considered choice'?" Graham, if you'll remember, is offended people call fetuses by the medically accureate term "fetus."
The initiative passed handily -- despite efforts by Republican officials in state office to game the vote, such as an unannounced voter purge and forcing anti-abortion bias into the ballot language -- which caused Mandelburg to engage in a bout of performative sadness in a Nov. 8 post, in which she laughably called the initiative's 12-point margin of victory a "close call":
It was a devastating day in Ohio on Tuesday when voters approved Issue 1, making abortion a so-called “right” in the Catholic state. Life-affirmers were heartbroken at the sobering news.
Ohio voted 56 percent to 44 percent to Issue 1. While it was a close call, ultimately Issue 1 passed. Unfortunately, the result isn’t surprising.
[...]
Now in Ohio, Issue 1 will trump the formerly instituted 22-week restriction by not defining the word “viability.” This will give abortion providers the chance to interpret the word on their own and perform abortion at any point on a case-by-case basis. This is a radical, pro-abortion policy and is heartbreaking for the innocent lives that will be lost as a result.
That sentiment was shared among pro-life individuals across the nation who expressed their heartbreak on social media.
After derisively describing those who supported the measure as "pro-aborts," Mandelburg concluded by lamenting:
Ultimately, it’s a sad and devastating day for pro-lifers in Ohio and the nation at large, but it’s an even more sad day for the babies that will be victim to this decision. On the one hand, this is what the overturn of Roe did. It pushed decisions back to states. But now the battle lies in getting people to wake up and realize what happens during an abortion and why it's a complete and utter grave evil so that our nation can become one that actually honors liberty and justice for ALL.
Perhaps one way to start is for anti-abortion extremists like Mandelburg to stop portraying anyone who isn't as extremely anti-abortion as they are as not just wrong but evil.
