Eden Responds
"Moral rehab for reporters" --I like that. Thanks for the plug, Ben.Regarding Ms. Chapman’s grievances, I stand by Colin O’Brien’s excellent story.
As the story states, abortion is not Bridge to Life’s mission. The center has helped hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women support babies whom they would not be able to support otherwise.
Regarding Ms. Chapman’s other criticism in the comments, she is correct that Yahoo Yellow Pages does not list 11 abortion clinics in College Point itself. I found that statistic via searching for abortion clinics in Flushing, Queens, which includes College Point. Here are the results of that search. To be accurate, should have said that there are 11 abortion clinics in the College Point area and the omission was my mistake. Nonetheless, the truth remains that it is easier to find an abortion clinic in Flushing than it is to find a Starbucks. But ask any one of those abortion clinics to give you diapers, clothes, food, toys, and a housing referral, and you’d have better luck asking Starbucks for a free grande mochaccino. That’s why Bridge to Life fills an important need in the community and, in my mind, deserves all the recognition it gets.
Ben, I hope that while you were searching for Big Town , you also found the very first one, on Frank Jump, a schoolteacher who has been living with HIV for over 20 years. Also, check out today’s story (which will be available here) about former slave Simon Deng’s Sudan Freedom Walk.
Eden is a former groupie who is now into Cardinal Ratzi the Natzi.
I got excited because I thought it said Conan O’Brien... Then I got sad and bored...
To Your Commenters, Sure, when you have no intelligent response to an intelligent post, just call names!
It’s hard to believe that your mental do-gooders, who usually put no feet on their political and social ideas, can’t understand that most people who enter a crisis-pregnancy center are referred there by their friends or family, that they expect the kind of help they get, that any do-good "pop-litically correct" dime-a-dozen social worker at any local hospital or public school will gladly send them to an abortion clinic.
Your commenters should not look down on the population that goes to a CPC, as if they are so ignorant. If young folks can figure out text-messaging and iPods, they can figure out which is a place to get an abortion, and which is not. Did your no-hands-on commenters ever think that poor folks esteem babies? Or is it just that your people don’t want to pay to help take care of them?
I like that Eden never addresses the fact that the folks at Bridge to Life were completely lying about abortion. Incidentally, why exactly are they listed under abortion services in her link?
And speaking of her link, I’m mystified as to how she counts 11 abortion clinics in Flushing. Even granting her the STRETCH that a regular ob/gyn office that also does abortions is an "abortion clinic," there aren’t 11 in Flushing listed there. I count, like, 9 (and I am counting R&N Management Services--whatever the heck that is--though I am excluding Moradi, Mark - Women’s Cancer Care-NY for what I hope are obvious reasons)
So, no, even this sad little insinuation, that it’s easier to get an abortion in Flushing than an overpriced coffee--doesn’t hold up when you click Eden’s own links, even using the most generous definition of "abortion clinic." Besides, everyone knows Flushing is Dunkin’ Donuts country!
As to her final point, what’s her point? I’ve never gone to a doctor’s office to get diapers, clothes, food, toys, and a housing referral, regardless of whether that doctor does abortions or not. Likewise, I’ve never gone to a social services agency to get a pap smear, abortion, or prenatal checkup. In a related point, I’ve never gone to the supermarket to buy auto parts.
In summation: Helping pregnant women great! Lying to pregnant women bad! Not being able to accurately count to 11 also bad.
As a resident of Flushing, I’m just pissed that she’s lumping us in with College Point.
Flushing has a certain ethnic chic. College Point has traffic & swamps. This kind of thing is so Manhattan-centric you’d think she was Carolyn Curiel.
Why would Eden think that having any Starbucks is a good thing?
I need to address a few more things in Dawn Eden’s response. First this:
"Regarding Ms. Chapman’s other criticism in the comments, she is correct that Yahoo Yellow Pages does not list 11 abortion clinics in College Point itself. I found that statistic via searching for abortion clinics in Flushing, Queens, which includes College Point."
Well, then she should have said so. Here’s is a quote from the article:
"Pregnant women in College Point have no shortage of abortion providers — at least 11, according to the online Yahoo! Yellow Pages."
Ms. Eden defended the obvious fabrication by saying:
"Nonetheless, the truth remains that it is easier to find an abortion clinic in Flushing than it is to find a Starbucks."
Au contraire. According her own research, there is one abortion clinic in Flushing, and ten Starbucks. Which means, quite simply, that she fabricated the information in the article and isn’t telling the truth now.
"The center has helped hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women support babies whom they would not be able to support otherwise."
For a few months, more likely weeks. Unlike Ms. Eden and Mr. O’Brien, I happen to be a parent, the proud mother of a bright and beautiful young woman. A few weeks worth of diapers and some used baby clothes is a drop in the enormous bucket of what a parent must provide. If these centers really wanted to help pregnant women, they would give them the clothes, food toys, etc., along with honest, all-options counseling, including safe legal abortion. But they don’t, Blanche, they don’t, they just want to stop women from having abortions and are willing to play dirty to get what they want.
I may be wrong, but the link that Ms. Eden provides lists fifteen (15) abortion providers within five miles of College Point, with at least nine of them in Flushing:
Liberty Women’s Health Flushing (1.8 miles)
All Women’s Medical Pavilion P.C Forest Hills Flushing (4.3)
Corona Woman Svc Flushing (2.6)
R & N Management Corp Inc Flushing (3.1)
Abortion & Women’s Health Bronx (3.5)
Knorr, William - Dr Emily Women’s Health Ctr Bronx (3.5)
Forest Hills Women’s Svc Flushing (3.5)
Epstein Salomon N MD Flushing (3.6)
Zargaroff, Shari - New York Ob-Gyn Assoc Flushing (3.9)
Bronx Women’s Pavilion Bronx (4.3)
Saponaro, Marie - Forest Hills Women’s Medical Flushing (4.4)
Planned Parenthood Bronx (4.4)
Moradi, Mark - Women’s Cancer Care-NY Flushing (4.7)
Gyns Management Svc Inc Bronx (4.7)
Semenza, Christine - Bronx Womens Health Bronx (4.9)
Note that three of the Bronx providers are closer to College Point than some of the Flushing providers. So I’m not sure what the point of all this quibbling is. The article didn’t say that the abortion providers were in College Point, merely that “pregnant women in College Point have no shortage of abortion providers.” That seems completely accurate to me — women in College Point don’t have more than a few minutes’ car ride to over fifteen abortion providers. It’s a little harsh to call this an “obvious fabrication,” when, if anything, the number of abortion providers was understated.
The article also has pictures of mothers and their babies on the wall. There’s no claim that those are fabricated. Does Ms. Chapman have any evidence that the mothers love their children any less than she loves her daughter? Was it evil for Bridge to have intervened and prevented abortions? Would those children have been better off never being born? Does Ms. Chapman have evidence that anyone has ever been hurt by Bridge’s conduct?
Finally, it’s not really fair to require Ms. Eden to answers charges of deception leveled against an unnamed Bridge volunteer, especially since Ms. Chapman offers nothing but her own say-so that the statements in question are false. I think the only lie occurring in that alleged conversation that can be absolutely confirmed is Ms. Chapman’s own admittedly false statement that she was pregnant. So it’s interesting for her to say that nothing can "balance the deception and dishonesty" that Bridge allegedly practices. Bridge saves lives -- what good balances out Ms. Chapman’s deception and dishonesty?
12:32, you’re kidding me, right?
Eden’s numbers in her link above don’t add up to 11 because the link Eden provides isn’t for, as she claims, a yahoo yp search of abortion clinics in Flushing, but to a yahoo yp search for abortion services "beyond college point." It’s right there in the upper right-hand corner.
This is probably because when one actually searches for abortion services in Flushing, one finds 11 entries, but it’s immediately obvious that these entries can’t support a claim that there are 11 abortion providers in Flushing--there is at least one double-count and at least 2 entries that appear to be errors (a management corporation and women’s cancer specialist?).
It looks to me like Eden or her reporter did a sloppy job on the initial research and Eden is getting a little creative in order to justify the incorrect "11 providers" number she ran with. It’s one thing to engage in advocacy journalism where one doesn’t mention information that makes an organization look bad. It’s another thing to play fast and loose with the objective facts you’re putting forth, first in the initial article and later in a piece justifying the initial article. That’s three strikes against Eden, for those of you keeping score.
Fundamentally, pro-choicers and pro-lifers aren’t going to agree who’s doing the noble work of "saving lives"--either by keeping women out of back alleys or by convincing women to carry pregnancies to term.
However, I’d like to think that editors wouldn’t let their own biases support a misrepresentation of the situation--either by omitting reports of a facility’s suspect actions, or by flatly mis-stating objective facts.
Basically, Eden’s full of crap, a lousy editor, and a rather transparent liar.
11:14,
The article said:
"Pregnant women in College Point have no shortage of abortion providers — at least 11, according to the online Yahoo! Yellow Pages."
I have listed at least fifteen abortion clinics that the Yahoo Yellow Pages indicate are within five miles of College Point.
You quibble that R & N Management is not an abortion clinic. This link indicates that it is. The cancer clinic also appears under the subheading of abortion services. But even if you exclude those two, you have at least thirteen clinics that women in College Point can easily go to.
But let’s play it your way. Let’s suppose a woman in College Point asked you "May I have a list of abortion providers that I can get to within a half hour?" Tell me, please, how many you would tell her there are. Also, please tell me how many CPCs you’d tell her there are. Any remember, no LYING -- pregnant women deserve accurate information and nothing but the whole truth.
By the way, I’ll simply ignore any further responses by you unless you (1) specifically give me the NUMBER of abortion clinic and (2) list their names. Also, while you’re at it, please tell me whether Ms. Chapman is a liar for saying that there’s only one abortion clinic in Flushing (the double-listed one). If she’s not, please tell me which of the nine I listed (or seven, if you exclude R&N & Moradi) are not abortion clinics.