So. As always, inquiring minds want to know. How many teenagers got bussed in for an edumacational day on the Hill?
Police estimate 5,000.
Here, we have the phrase 'estimated at over 10,000' but no word by whom.
The ever-reliable LifeShite claims 15,000 attendees.
When I posted a link to the nifty Hill Cam on Twitter, David Akin, a major star at Fox News North, pointed out that by then the gathering had perhaps started to dwindle as the march had started.
I asked when he reckoned the peak occurred. He said, 12:45 to 1:00. (I loooove Twitter.)
Moseyed around the toobz for a while and found this screen-shot at Trashy's World.
I asked when it was taken. By chance, the window was still open and read 12:51, smack dab in Akin's peak period.
Tweeted a link to Trashy's and asked if that look 'peakish' to Akin.
Answer:
Yup. That's what I saw RT @fernhilldammit: Screen shot at 1251 http://bit.ly/kA0VUR @davidakin said that's within peak attendance time.
And as Antonia Z pointed out, that crowd includes cops, media, bystanders, and pro-choice demonstrators.
So, what do you think? Here's another shot from a little while ago for comparison.
And just to round out March of the Feti (JJ's phrase, which I'd reference if bloody Twitter would stop pulling a Blogger), here's what the oft-disappointed-but-sure-they're-on-track-with-a-Con-majority think is in store for us.
Pat O'Brien, a former Liberal MP who sat as an Independent after falling out with his party over abortion, said "the debate is on" and politicians will have to catch up with the public.
And Georges Buscemi, president of Campagne Québec-Vie, said abortion services can be scaled back without a new law making the procedure illegal.
For instance, federal funding to family-planning organizations "can be diverted to other groups that are more open to life."
"There could be some behind-the-scenes work done," Buscemi said at news conference.
"Different things, subsidies to different organizations, policies on health, policies on education. There are a lot of things that can be done behind the scenes to prepare for the future."
March organizer Matthew Wojciechowski claimed there are now between 60 and 65 MPs out of 308 elected to Parliament who are in favour of new abortion laws.
Behind the scenes, eh? Nope. No hidden agenda atall atall.
UPDATE: Buckets does some sciency-facty stuff and comes up with 8,000.
23 comments:
I do so lurve how how some people insist that women's rights are always open to debate.
"Behind the scenes" -- bwahaha. Someone should tell these people that Jesus doesn't like it when you're SLEAZY.
Federal funding to family planning orgs can be diverted to groups that are more "open to life"?? I can't think of anything that's more "open to life" than organizations that provide womens' health services so they don't die of cancer or in a back alley somewhere.
I'm sick & tired of these nitwits fraudulently taking ownership of the word "life". Everything they stand for isn't life-affirming for anything but feti.
I see the Nice Drugs have kicked in, JJ. Back to your feisty self. ;-)
Yes, I can't believe how fast the Nice Drugs took hold and started doing their thing! I feel like I've got Tiger Blood!!
Rawwwwrrr, JJ!
I'm not sure if it was Sixth Estate that reported that under Harper, nearly half of all foreign aid funding went to religious groups (the right ones and not those like KAIROS). They got away with that under a minority government were opposition scrutiny was at an all-time low.
Domestically, behind the scenes massaging of public attitudes towards social conservative ideas has already begun but on a smaller scale. Lots of jeebus-loving organizations getting government $$$ for youth initiatives and even housing projects (soul counseling being on the menu of services on offer in these federally funded programs).
Do we know how many skool kidz got bussed in? Remember being in school and how the whole goal was escape? No excuse was too lame? Just wondering..but if a bunch of them got bussed in and dumped off and minutes later they had wandered off because they just weren't that interested in the *debate* but hey, it was a day they didn't have to be incarcerated in the classroom...
k'in: Last year I was pleased to note that at least 2 media outlets mentioned 'hundreds' of students from local Catholic high schools. I didn't notice any this year.
I have Twitter incoming from Lifesite. W00t!
You have a talent, JJ. Check your Twitter stream.
I'm not sure if it was Sixth Estate that reported that under Harper, nearly half of all foreign aid funding went to religious groups (the right ones and not those like KAIROS).
BY: I compiled a list not long ago, and my last commenter on that post, an anon, listed religious funding under EAP just for Marianopolis College, a private CEGEP in Montreal.
http://sistersagesmusings.ca/2011/02/17/oh-dear-stephen-your-master-already-funds-religious-organizations/
I wonder if Dean Delmastro came out blubbering on camera, on a microphone this year? I saw that, honestly, that was the highlight of that year's fetus festivities.
I am getting sick (all over again) of the expression "the abortion debate".
*The Abortion Debate*
There was once an Abortion Debate
That occurred back in 1988
The Supreme Court pronounced
Womens' rights had been trounced
But the fetus fetishists didn't get the memo til it was too late.
So fuck "the Debate".
LOL, Tubesock's really crying the blues about the CBC's "liberal biased reporting" because they gave the crowd estimate as 5000. All they did was ask one of the cops, he should take his whinging to them. Maybe get tazed for his trouble.
But that's the fetus fetishists for you. When they don't like the answer (ie., the answer they got in 1988), they go full-metal pasty-faced fascist, demanding investigations & retractions, yada yada yaaaaaada...
@JJ:
The argument will reopen - make no mistake about it.
One of Harper's wingnuts will introduce a private members bill that will "accidentally" get passed into law.
... and if Harper manages to stack the Supreme Court the way he's stacked the Senate, we're f***ed.
"Paycheck" swears they were 15,000 anti-choicers marching. That's a stupid lie that's not supported by the photos of The Hill.
The man's few remaining brain cells are being deprived of oxygen by all his backed-up sperm.
Watching "Evan Tory Butt Kisser" and one of his supper intelligent panellist and they commented it was way bigger than last year and nosier also, just saying.
MgS - "The Debate" will NOT re-open.
Harper isn't a dummy, he knows that opening this issue would only breathe life into the Hidden Agenda meme which took him 5 long years to overcome, and would be electoral suicide for the cons. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see more peripheral "unborn victims"-type legislation like that which was almost pushed through a few years ago with the help of treacherous Liberal socons.
deBeauxOs - Arrrggh: Sperm Backup Psychosis, that most monstrous of mental afflictions. What horror & havoc it wreaks.
I think if you count people coming & going, there were probably more than 5000, maybe even as many as 7 or 8000. This is consistent with the turnout every year, which to me seems like a pretty good turnout. But looking at pictures of actual crowds of 10 to 20k, it doesn't look like this one was anywhere near 15k. I don't see what's wrong with that, 7000 is a good-sized crowd, but I guess to the fetus fetishists it's important to keep a sense of building momentum. (Without it, people might stop donating to Campaign Life and Lifesite.)
Now it is 20,000.
438 photos. Lotta R.C. highschool kids. Also guys in funny costumes, with plumed hats and capes. Knights of Columbus? Glurgey banners. I could sit still for only about 30 of them.
fern hill, I just noticed that the website you linked to also artfully mingles photos from past marches.
But the overwhelming impression is that most, if not all those marching are fundamentalist Catholics.
Which they have the right to do however - obfuscating this fact as the National Pustule does - deliberately spins the story to make it appear as though this is a *grass-roots* demo representative of all Canadians. ^NOT!
dBO: Yes. I remember reading years ago that the principal difference between Cdn and USian fetus fetishists is that ours are fundy Catholic and theirs are fundy Protestants.
I just posted an update. Buckets reckons it was 8,000, about what JJ thought too. Great minds and all that.
8000 fetus fetishists FTW! (Or in their case, for the lose.)
They get pretty much the same crowd every year, between 7 or 8000, which is not a bad turnout by any means. But it's in Campaign Life's interests to inflate the numbers and say the turnout is getting bigger every year. CLC is broke, and the only way to keep those donations rolling in is to make it seem like there's some momentum behind this issue. (In reality, the anti-abortion issue has no momentum at all. 80% of Canadians have long since left it behind, satisfied that it's in the capable hands of those who know best how to deal with it... (all together now...) Women & their Doctors.)
Great work Buckets!
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