Ted Turner. Image used by license from lukeford.net.
New media is an effective tool to be utilized in today’s most important debates, as Live Action can testify. Founded in 2003 by then 15-year-old Lila Rose and developed by devoted college students and other youth, this organization demonstrates the keenness in using new media to educate the public about the greatest human rights injustice of our time – and build a culture of life.
It’s not surprising that those on the opposite end of the worldview spectrum are interested in getting a slice of the new media as well. They might happen to have disproportionately greater financial resources, however.
In 2006, the website RHRealityCheck.org was started by the U.N. Foundation, a brainchild of media mogul and billionaire Ted Turner.
RH Reality Check’s mission statement:
“Reproductive Health Reality Check, a UN Foundation blog, was launched in 2006 to harness the power of new media to offer a reality check on the misconceptions about reproductive health. RH Reality Check’s rebuttal arsenal against the “reckless rhetoric” used by opponents of reproductive rights includes original reporting and opinion offered daily by in-house bloggers and the broader reproductive health community, longer-form weekly series, video and audio podcasts, and reference areas offering invaluable background on this important issue.”
Predictably, a stockpile of abortion advocacy fills a considerable area of that “rebuttal arsenal”.
RH Reality Check is listed as a resource for abortion providers in the National Abortion Federation’s book Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy: Comprehensive Abortion Care.
The managers of RH Reality Check say that they “enjoy the support of the U.N. Foundation and the editorial independence entrusted to us.”
But Turner, who initiated the U.N. Foundation with a $1 billion grant in 1998, has himself been an ally of the abortion agenda for some time now. Over twenty years ago, Turner reportedly dismissed pro-life people as “bozos” who look like “idiots” when his cable superstation TBS was airing the pro-choice propaganda documentary “Abortion: For Survival”.
In 2010, the U.N. Foundation gave cash grants to several abortion-supporting organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (which received over $230,000) in the purpose of “Women & Population”.
Last year, extreme environmentalist Turner endorsed China’s one-child policy for fear that otherwise humanity will one day starve into extinction. (Incidentally, an article from RH Reality Check three years ago leans in that direction.) He also has predicted that global warming will lead to a world where, “Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”
Never mind, of course, that the shortsightedness of the Chinese reproductive regime (sometimes accompanied by forced abortions and sterilization) has resulted in sex-selective abortions and other measures that have caused the male to female ratio to be skewed for at least a generation. This has resulted in a lack of wives in some areas for many of China’s young men and is possibly linked to an increase in mental health problems and socially disruptive behavior among men, as well as sex trafficking (not to mention a looming economic problem).
Odd to see a patron of the pro-choice culture taking cues from a state not particularly considerate of human rights, isn’t it?
Gloss and good intentions can’t eliminate the consequences that come with disrespecting the unborn.
Mr. Turner needs a real reality check.
