During the late spring and early summer of 1997 there was a passing
scandal on the Internet concerning a web page located at www.abortion.com.
"We have received notice that the voting numbers seem inaccurate.
After over 4 months this message remains on that site today. From the start
this message seemed a little fishy for a couple of reasons.
1. The tone of this message reveals that the web authors did not agree that
there was anything wrong but that some type of pressure was put on them to
remove it because the votes "seemed" inaccurate. The pressure could have
been from the NUMBER of people complaining, or the INFLUENCE (or position)
of the ones giving "notice". The words "receive notice" tend to suggest
that the ones complaining were more of an influential group rather than
ordinary web surfers.
2. Anyone who knows something about programming also knows that a voting
program is quite simple; it is hard to believe that there was any error in
it, or that it would take over four months to get it fixed. Something such
as this could be easily tested before implementation for the public.
This required further research. The first thing to do would be to e-mail
the authors of the web page and ask them about it. Curiously, there was no
e-mail address to be found.
CARAL and NARAL
Next would be to do a keyword search on the Net as well as in the news
groups. This resulted in an interesting find. The web site for the
organization CARAL (California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action
League) had a Press Release page specifically dedicated and opposed to the
abortion voting web site, designating it as being a "fakewebsite". The
executive directress and spokeswoman accused the authors of "fixing
statistics".
"Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we
simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media
that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favour of
permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few
people care to be in the minority. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our
program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal
abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching
100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.
Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of
women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure
we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. "
See "Ex-Abortionist Talks".....
Hypocrisy....a group that professes a concern for "choice" violates the
right of the public to make a free-choice by deceiving them with lies on
which to make their choice!
"when a user clicks the icon to declare themselves pro-choice. the pro-life
counter increases by two to five people, while the pro-choice counter
rarely if ever budges."
Did it ever simply occur to them that the pro-life voting just happened
to be ten times more frequent than the pro-choice? What ever happened to
"rash judgment"? It seems, according to their logic, since "every
reputable poll shows that the majority of Americans...are pro-choice" that
MUST mean that this particular poll is a disreputable one...and they follow
through with the wild accusations!
1) It looks professionally designed.
Conclusion
It seems probable - that this web site (www.abortion.com) was created
at least under indirect auspices of the government. That Christians on the
Internet began to spread the word of the web site (even stating at times
that the pro-choice votes were higher). Before any controversy started, our
own experience showed that the voting program worked well. Then the
pro-life voting began to outweigh the pro-choice voting and someone (or
group of people) felt threatened by the Internet poll that was not in their
favor, and helped to put the pressure on, which resulted in the site being
'given notice that the voting numbers seemed inaccurate'. And the site
disabled the voting feature.
The person (or persons) authoring the web site presented themselves as
being non-partisan, and the web site was designed accordingly: the two
sides of the abortion issue (both pro and con) were presented such that the
reader was left to decide from the two. The significant feature of the site
allowed the reader to vote by pressing one of two buttons - PRO-LIFE or
PRO-CHOICE. The results of the voting were displayed immediately by the
reader pressing their own RELOAD button on their browser. Each day the
voting started anew. The authors of the web site stated that the voting
results would be sent to Congress in Washington at the end of each month.
What is the scandal? Accusations and complaints were being made by
"pro-choicers" saying that the voting results were being underhandedly
manipulated in favor of the pro-life stand. These complaints virtually shut
down the web site, forcing the authors to disable the voting feature. Not
only did this accusation make it look bad for pro-lifers on the whole, but
it brought up the issue that maybe voting should not be allowed on the
Internet! Suggesting that we should look to the 'official' polls and
surveys such as that by Gallup!
The Catholic Dispatch became aware of this web site in April upon
receipt of an e-mail message by a pro-lifer urging others of like mind to
go and vote for the pro-life stand. Pro-lifers began to send e-mail around
the Net to get more and more votes. Fair enough! The so-called
"pro-choice" activists have an equal chance to urge people to vote, as is
the case with ANY election.
The Catholic Dispatch visited the web site (and naturally voted against
abortion). The voting results at that time were approximately 10 to 1 in
favor of the pro-life stand! Curious to know whether the voting engine was
programmed to allow a person to vote more than once, we proceeded to
experiment. We tried several times, and on separate days, to vote more than
once and reload the web page. We were satisfied that the program only
allowed us to vote once (at least per day). On several days we revisited
the site to check the current voting results for that day and noticed that
the voting consistently fell at about 90% for the pro-life vote!
A couple of weeks later upon visiting the site, we noticed that the
voting feature was disabled and replaced with a curious message that said:
We have removed the voting program so we can
review it for any possible errors.
We apologize for any inconvenience."
CARAL is an affiliate of NARAL, the larger, nationwide organization that
is very active throughout the country and has a marked presence on the
Internet. Considering this accusation of "fixing statistics", it would be
well to mention the roots of NARAL. It was founded in 1968 as the National
Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (After the passage of Roe v.
Wade in 1973, NARAL changed its name to the National Abortion Rights Action
League.)
It would be well to recall that Dr. Bernard Nathanson was one of the
founders of NARAL in 1968. By his own confession he admitted that:
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"A truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most Americans were
against permissive abortion. Yet within five years we had convinced the
U.S. Supreme Court to issue the decision which legalized abortion
throughout America in 1973 and produced virtual abortion on demand up to
birth. How did we do this? It is important to understand the tactics..."
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From the May Press Release we see CARAL's spokeswoman say, "It's just
another example of anti-choice activists fixing statistics. Every reputable
poll shows that the majority of Americans, regardless of gender, political
and religious affiliation are pro-choice. But if they can't get their
numbers through legitimate means, apparently abortion opponents just make
them up."
Enough said!
One last thing to comment on is the accusation in the CARAL News Release
based on the discovery of "Sharp-eyed pro-choice activists":
Along with this accusation is the suggestion that the authors of the
abortion voting web site must have lied when they said they were
"non-partisan", but were actually opponents of abortion. However, there are
good reasons to believe that this abortion voting web site was truly done
by a non-partisan group who had it professionally designed for the purpose.
Rumors have it that the site may even have been put up under the direct, or
indirect, auspices of the government:
2) It is strictly dedicated ONLY to the abortion vote.
3) There was no name of a group, and no contact e-mail address.
4) The voting ability has remained disabled for more than four months, yet
fully accessible to the public. This likely shows the lack of concern for
the fee to keep it in place. This can also suggest a free account, or
possible funding.
5) The server of that web site hosts a great multitude of pornographic and
x-rated domain names not to be even mentioned among Christians. Since
active pro-lifers are almost invariably people claiming to believe in
Christ and the Bible, it is improbable to suppose the authors are
anti-abortion.
It is hard to imagine pro-lifer complaints that could produce such quick
results with a web site that they found unjust or offensive!
