I read some articles from the John Birch Society’s long-standing New American magazine and am passing along two articles. Both provide a helpful counterbalance to the mainstream media’s narrative. They are lengthy and rather dry—-they don’t evoke a gleeful “own the left” response that, say, listening to Tucker or Ben Shapiro will evoke in red-meat conservatives—-but they present relevant considerations, like a conservative Time magazine article would. I can understand why Greenhaven Press’s Opposing Viewpoints series often drew from TNA to represent a “conservative viewpoint” on controversial issues. I still have questions, as I normally do, but consider these articles worth sharing.
1. “Will Pro-Life Laws Really Kill Women?”, by Rebecca Terrell.
Terrell argues that many state pro-life laws already contain exceptions for the life and physical health of the mother. Moreover, they prohibit elective abortions, which are unrelated to, say, a situation in which a woman has a miscarried fetus inside of her that can cause infection and needs to be removed. Terrell notes that Europe, too, has restrictive abortion laws, without a massive number of women dying, and, against the charge that OB-GYNs in the U.S. are fleeing pro-life states, she argues that most OB-GYNs do not practice abortion, anyway, and quotes OB-GYNs who deny that restrictive abortion laws affect their practice. The logical question would then be, “What about the horror stories? Are they true?” Terrell seems to suspect that we are not being told the whole story in those cases, treating them as propaganda. An alternative possibility is that hospitals are trying to stay on the safe side to avoid lawsuits, avoiding what is not necessarily prohibited by law. This article is admirable in that it lays out the horror stories as portrayed in the media, then responds to them.
2. “Fighting for Fair Elections,” by Annalisa Pesek.
You would think, from the mainstream media narrative, that Republican Keri Lake of Arizona is simply a sore loser about losing the gubernatorial race. I heard fragment’s of Lake’s case from one of her appearances on Tucker, but this article lays it out in more detail. According to this article, there were significant deficiencies in the election: malfunctioning voting machines, unverified ballots being counted, election officials who expressed bias against MAGA candidates, and the Secretary of State, who, incidentally, was also Lake’s opponent in the election, threatening counties to certify. What interests me about this article is that Lake, at least sometimes, runs contrary to the typical conservative spiel about election reform. Granted, there are overlaps, particularly about the importance of ensuring that ballots are verified. But conservatives usually are the ones who insist on “Election Day,” not “Election Month,” and they especially are rigid about election deadlines. Lake, however, supports allowing more time for certification, in these cases, and is also supportive of holding the election again. There may be fact-checks out there that argue contrary to Lake, but, if you are interested in Lake’s case, this is the article to read.