Wednesday 2 October 2013

Join the #DefendAbortion Tweet Fest Tomorrow

Fetus fetishists plan to spam their provincial legislators tomorrow in a Tweet Fest urging them to #defund abortion.

They've targetted four provinces.

DAMMIT JANET! proposes a counter Tweet Fest using the hashtag #DefendAbortion.

At DJ!, we live to serve, so here are the lists of provincial pols on Twitter from PoliTwitter.

Alberta

Nova Scotia

Manitoba

Ontario

We've reported on these feeble efforts before. They've been centred in Ontario so far. Like this lame little gathering from March this year.

Sadly, this rally had been postponed from the previous fall when Hurricane Sandy pooped on their parade.

The planned rally was announced with some hoopla at Queen's Park, 'sponsored' by three MPPs, who unaccountably did not attend.

They were Rick Nicholls, John O'Toole, and Randy Hillier.

Only @RickNicholls and @RandyHillier have Twitter accounts.

I intend to concentrate my spamming efforts on those two.

Along with @timhudak, aka He Who Would Defund Abortion Until It Became Too Hot a Potato, of course.

Check out politicians on Twitter from your province and identify those who might be receptive to defund/defend messages. You can also check Campaign Lie's handy list of MPPs, MLAs, MNAs, abd MHAs to find out where they stand on abortion -- if they've bothered to answer its questionnaire. Many I checked had not.

If you need some talking points for why abortion must be fully funded, ARCC has you covered here.

Let's do this.

UPDATE: Wow. Alison in the comments points out that ALL the comments at LifeShite on this article come from Murricans blatting about ObamaCare and the US government shut-down. Now we know that fetus fetishists aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, but this is a bit much. Alison asks: Just where does the funding for the Canadian anti-abortion gang come from again?

MORE UPDATE: AntoniaZ in the comments prefers #DefendChoice. Fine by me. But in this case, it is specifically abortion they want to defund. So I'll used #DefendAbortion and add #DefendChoice if I've got characters to spare.

EVEN MORE UPDATE: Alison expands on her comment at her blog.

AND MORE UPDATE: I haven't read this yet (11-page PDF). The Evangelical Whatsits have updated a 2012 evaluation on the requirement to fund abortion by provinces. Arming themselves for tomorrow, it seems.

10 comments:

Alison said...

Only in Canada, you say?

Under the LifeSite Canada Edition about this twit-a-thon targetting Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario MPs for Thursday are 46 comments.
Canada or anything to do with Canada isn't mentioned once in any of them - it's all Americans raving on about Obama and Obamacare and "our founding fathers" and the American Constitution.
Where does the anti-choice movement in Canada get their funding from again?

fern hill said...

Good grief. I just looked at those comments and updated the blogpost. (Note to self: check comments at LifeShite next time.)

Antonia Z said...

I object to the hashtag #DefendAbortion. I would prefer #DefendChoice since reproductive rights are about giving women as many options as possible over their lives and health.

fern hill said...

Well, this campaign of theirs is specifically aimed at defunding one procedure -- abortion. I'll use both if there's room, but I prefer #DefendAbortion in this case.

choice joyce said...

Well, #DefendAbortion has already been put out there on Facebook, Twitter, listservs etc., so it would be confusing to switch at this point, we'd end up with tweets using one or the other and that could weaken the impact. Also, it's meant to be a play on the "Defund Abortion" phrase. So while I might agree that #DefundChoice is better because it reflects repro options, I think it's too late.

LifeShite gets its funding solely from readers as far as I can tell. They have a big international reach so can raise a few 100 thou each year. And there was that piece last year documenting that the March for Life has gotten funding from Knights of Columbus in the U.S. http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/investigations/canadian-pro-life-fueled-us-lobbyists

Amy Tuckett said...

We (@WHCwpg) have been promoting the hashtag #nodebate all week - but we can switch!

choice joyce said...

Haha, now we have 3 hashtags! Thanks Amy for offering to switch. I guess we'll do the best we can by prioritizing #DefEnd Abortion (maybe putting the cap E in there is a nice touch too?) but it's fine if the other 2 get used too.They are all good.

Anonymous said...

I worry that capitalizing the E in #DefEnd Abortion could be too easily read as 'End' abortion by the apparently barely literate anti choice gang.
~waterbaby

Anonymous said...

Lifeshite chose to defame, harass and mailbomb F. Raymond Gravel for his pro-choice stand as an MMP. He sued for defamation. More here: http://www.catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/15777-first-round-goes-to-gravel-in-lifesite-lawsuit
~waterbaby

fern hill said...

waterbaby's link to Raymond Gravel story and our blogpost on it.

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