Yeah, because that’s the point it’s really trying to get across.

Thats how it looked to me. I mean, they’re talking about “tactical points” and describing “[passing a] test in order to maintain credibility and have further opportunity to make the case for the unborn.” Thats not the language of a believer, thats the language of a propaganda agent. Sure, this manual was written for people who are genuinely in favor of forced birth legislation, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also directing people how to respond in ways they wouldn’t normally respond in order to continue a discussion. We wouldn’t need a manual of the directions were someone’s natural responses now, would we?

Only someone with a huge, irrational bias against prolifers would take it that way.

Jill has 300 or so years of moral and political philosophy on her side, not to mention a few hundred years worth of jurisprudence. The forced birth crowd (not pro-life, thats Nietzsche) has a particular interpretation of a text thats been retranslated by political forces for two millennial and a focus on emotionally evocative imagery. Do you really want to be throwing around words like “irrational?” Or are you just extrapolating that she must be hysterical because of her uterus?

Does it make any sense to think that Justice for All really wants people without compassion volunteering and then faking compassion to college students. Or could it make more sense that they want volunteers to be better at showing their compassion?

Thats not the dichotomy at work here. It isn’t a matter of no compassion or compassion, its a matter of rhetorical deceit.

I’ve met Steve Wagner, one of the co-authors of this manual, and he’s quite a compassionate individual who truly cares about women

I know several people who have personally met George Bush, mostly prior to his presidency, and the overwhelming consensus is that he’s a nice, decent, pleasant, likable guy. The kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with and watch a baseball game. He’s also, it seems, the kind of guy who is willing to order people to be tortured if he believes its necessary. People are complex and they tend to do nasty things when they feel strongly.

Also, lets be clear. Steve Wager might care about women, but that care is tempered by other values he holds. At best he cares about women in a specific context and values the life of a fetus over the bodily sovereignty of a woman. No amount of care in the world will change that basic, underlying fact.

Name one part of the guide which tells volunteers to say something they don’t believe?

Hmm…

Just as there is an underlying test of your compassion when people bring up abortion in the case of rape, when someone asks “Would you say abortion is wrong when used to save the mother’s life?” they are testing whether you are a reasonable, compassionate human being. It’s critical that you pass this test in order to maintain credibility and have further opportunity to make the case for the unborn.

Ok, what do I win?

Or are you, like Amanda, unable to differeniate between “a lie” and something which you either don’t agree with or think is false.

Aww…but I haven’t even used all of the passive aggressive I got over Easter yet! What a rip off…

Take this section:
“the pill depletes the endometrium so the child can’t implant. It’s as if the child is entering the uterus looking for a camping spot and finds “NO CAMPING” signs placed all over the uterus. Not finding a place to implant, he dies from lack of nutrition and hydration and is purged from the uterus.”

Yep. My uterus is definitely a no camping zone.

Plus, a large % of conceived pregnancies spontaneously abort (i.e., miscarry) within the first few weeks of pregnancy, without any medical intervention, before women even realize that they are pregnant.

Aside from that, this is creepy anthropomorphizing of a fetus. I am now picturing a little fetus with a backpack, crawling through the uterus with an increasingly desperate appearance on “his” little face… poor, poor baby.

Yeah, because that’s the point it’s really trying to get across. Only someone with a huge, irrational bias against prolifers would take it that way. Does it make any sense to think that Justice for All really wants people without compassion volunteering and then faking compassion to college students. Or could it make more sense that they want volunteers to be better at showing their compassion?

I’ve met Steve Wagner, one of the co-authors of this manual, and he’s quite a compassionate individual who truly cares about women and about the college students he interacts with. He’s got a blog if you want to do more than try pigeon-hole prolifers .

But it’s mostly a “How to Lie” instruction guide, to help people who don’t care about women at all effectively pretend that born people matter.

Name one part of the guide which tells volunteers to say something they don’t believe? Or are you, like Amanda, unable to differeniate between “a lie” and something which you either don’t agree with or think is false.

So, the handbook sounds like it’s basically an admission that anti-choicers are compassionless & don’t give a damn about women’s lives???

THIS.

Seriously. I want one. If there is not one, someone needs to write one. Stat.

Incidentally, I work with college freshmen in composition classes, and abortion is a common topic for rhetoric papers. That’s a whole headache that I won’t get into, but a resource like that would be invaluable. Many young people are honestly ignorant of the history and logic of the abortion debate, and having a book or other resource to point them to with calm, rational logic would be… just amazing. It would save me some sanity points, at the very least.