|
|
|
|
Birth or Not?
Part Three of Three By Dave Andrusko When I first wrote about the media storm surrounding a supposed online thumbs up or down referendum on an unborn baby's life, it occurred to me there was less chance "BIRTH OR NOT' was a hoax than there was that the couple was divided over whether to have an abortion. Now it seems it's some of each. In case you haven't kept track, Pete and Alisha Arnold have a website at which you could vote on whether or not she should abort. They gave December 7 as the final date for their internet plebiscite on death, only to tell us yesterday that they had closed up shop. Their baby is almost 18 weeks old. On the hoax side there was evidence suggesting that Pete had pro-life inclinations; that he had purchased the domain months before Alisha had become pregnant (for the third time--she'd miscarried twice previously); and the commonsensical notion that if abortion was a serious option, why the weekly progress reports on "Baby Wiggles?" The "aha" moment for this view came last week when Pete Arnold told CNN that even though his wife is "pro-choice," they "agreed that abortion was not on the table for them." Arnold insisted that "even though there were never any plans to accept the vote results if abortion won," nonetheless what he had done was not a hoax. So what was it then? A kind of an exercise in pure participatory democracy, according to Pete Arnold. "My intent is not to deceive people, but at the same point, I do want people to talk about this. This seemed like a pretty good way to further the discussion, because people don't ever seem to want to talk about it for real if there's no name on it, no Baby Wiggles," he told CNN. But that didn't sit well with Alisha Arnold who fired back at her husband in a resulting post. "Although my intentions about this pregnancy may have changed over the course of the last few months," it is "simply not true," she wrote, that "terminating the pregnancy was never on the table. … My husband may wish that that was the case, but our early disagreement about this pregnancy is what lead us to start the website in the first place." She concludes that while, "I don't believe I could go through with an abortion now, it doesn't mean that I don't believe in a woman's right to make that decision." Two summary points. First, as noted above, the Arnolds shut the voting down yesterday with over 2,000,000 votes cast. Clearly Alisha understands that the electronic ballot box was stuffed, since she wrote in her latest post that they are investigating the possibility of fraud. What else could explain why a whopping 77% voted for an abortion? Second, there is the question of how this was/is handled. If you noticed, NRLC acted on the knowledge that EVERY baby matters--and that you do what you can to save the child. Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |