Charities Upset Over Chase Facebook Contest 464
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the could-have-just-used-terms-and-conditions dept.
from the could-have-just-used-terms-and-conditions dept.
ssv03 writes "The New York Times is reporting that Chase Community Giving of Chase Bank recently held a contest on Facebook in which users were encouraged to vote for their favorite charities. At the end of the contest, the 100 charities with the most votes would win $25,000 and advance to the next round to have a chance to win $1 million. Initially, the vote counts for each organization were made public, but two days before voting ended they were hidden, and the final totals have still not been released. While Chase had no official leader board during the voting, several organizations were keeping track of projected winners. Those projections were almost identical to the final results, yet several organizations including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Marijuana Policy Project and several anti-abortion groups were not finalists. They had been performing very well (some within the top 20) until the vote counters were removed. Chase Bank has so far refused to discuss the issue with the organizations. SSDP has spoken out in a press release (PDF) and is calling for a boycott."
Re:Charities? (Score:0, Interesting)
Plenty of anti-abortion groups are about helping and educating pregnant women, not advancing political change.
If by "education" you mean abstinence only and if they're pregnant, well, they have to have the baby and that's all. And what does a scared pregnant girl after the baby is born? Adoption? Whatever - the girl is on her own after the baby is born.
That's the trouble with all anti-abortion groups: they only care about babies being born, after wards, the mother is on her own - even if it means they starve and are homeless. And many of them have the audacity to call themselves Christian.
Pro-life indeed.
Re:Good for Chase. (Score:4, Interesting)
The thought that people are putting giving someone a hot meal over say giving a good professional education sickens me.
The fact is that most of the people whose lives have been destroyed by drug-related arrests are not bored college kids looking for recreation. If your dad is rich enough your arrest will be stricken off police records. If you can pay a good enough lawyer you'll get probation. If you are poor you'll get a rap sheet that will haunt you forever.
Disclaimer: I have never used drugs, not even marijuana. But I support total legalization of all drugs.
Oh Come On (Score:2, Interesting)
The anti-choice side just want full control over a woman's body. To them a woman is nothing more than livestock that they own.
The anti-life people are just in it because, frankly, killing babies is fun and they can't quite figure out how to legally have Friday night baby killing parties.
Now... figure out which side I'm on :-P
Re:Free abortions for minorities. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you mean "helping" make sure they don't get an abortion by whatever means necessary (including lying to them and setting up "pregnancy resource centers" that pretend to offer abortions but really just string women along for long enough they can't seek one elsewhere), and by "educating" you mean misleading for ideological reasons, then yes, exactly that. Seriously, the anti-choice movement is quite evil.
Re:Charities? (Score:1, Interesting)
Those who want to make the choice for the woman based on their own values, usually also wants to minimize sexual education (as it should only be done in the context of marriage) and minimize access to contraceptives.
Not always. In fact there is a growing movement among Christians (who make up the vast majority of pro-lifers in America) that is finally understanding that it's futile and foolish to expect non-Christians to behave like Christians. They won't (and shouldn't) change their stance on abortion, but they're much more practical in that they won't fight sex-ed and contraceptive access. As the old guard dies off, I think we'll see this movement grow.
Re:Hold on (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if most people support marijuana law reform [drugpolicy.org], they aren't actually proponents, just not opponents. In both the Obama survey and the Facebook survey, results that seem to show that marijuana law reform has a lot of proponents are skewed because the style of survey trends towards over-representing the young and the vocal. It still remains that most Americans just don't care enough for anything to come of it.
Re:Charities? (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been counseling outside of abortion clinics for approx. 15 years.
Most women that I've managed to speak to say "I've got no choice". We offer them a choice. We offer help with anything they need or want. We don't stop them going in and having an abortion though. Many women have taken us up on our offer. Many women want just that - help and support.
I've also seen young women literally dragged in screaming that they didn't want an abortion. But their parents or boyfriend does. Where is the choice in that? They are forced to have the abortion. I've even seen this happen when there were pro-choice people there. They did not offer to help her. They obstructed us from offering her help. What whould you have done?
We hand out pro-life literature and facts on what will happen to the woman after an abortion. Some of the people that hand out the pamphlets have had abortions themselves. They agree with the information in the pamphlet. They know what is involved. They say they were NOT informed about what would happen to them.
Pro-choice people harrass us and try to tear up our pamphlets. They try to stop us talking to those people going in. They say they are pro-choice. My reply to them is that if they are pro choice then they should be helping us give information to people so that they can make an informed choice. They have NEVER listened to this or help us give info to those going in.
These pro-choice people often get violent towards us. We never hit back. I've been threatened, spat on, pushed, abused, etc, etc. I've NEVER done the same to pro-choice people. I don't call these people pro-choice any more. I call them pro-abortionists. They use the words pro-choice - they are really pro-abortion. They are really anti-choice. What are you?
Re:Pro-"Choice" (Score:4, Interesting)
The abuses you've imagined are not because a mother suddenly decided, two weeks before her due date, that she didn't want a baby.
These abuses are not imagined, they are real. Even if 2 weeks after she found out she was pregnant, that doesn't make it OK. I also think many people may be OK with abortion in the "logical" instances you use in the defense of abortion. A shockingly vast majority of abortions are simply "choice".
Finally, statistics demonstrate that women will still get abortions, regardless of how stringent the theocracy is that you place them under. Legalized abortions mean fewer women die. Which do you want, brassy moral superiority and thousands of women dead, or an unpleasant feeling and those women still alive? That's the only 'choice' offered.
I fail to see how you can justify something as "right" because,"They were going to do it anyway!" Michael Vick would still be fighting dogs if we held that standard to everything with any sort of "moral" argument to it. People still fight dogs, every day. And perhaps you are right, less women die. But they kill more babies since it is easy and legal. I am not going to be for heroin being legal just because it may save some lives from bad needles. (I know they can be attained free in places, but you get the point.)
I choose the pleasant feeling of the right choice, and not advocating murder. There is no way around it, that is what it is. Saying a child is not "born", and therefore not alive well, you might want to reserve a nice spot in hell with the rest of the lawyers and lobbyists that deserve to go there. Whatever you vision of hell may be.
One must see the forest from the trees. Abortion for choice is undeniably wrong to anyone if you can concede that a child is alive (refuse to debate that right now) except to anyone who is blinded by selfishness. Killing, or more specifically murder, is wrong. There is no moral way to justify murder. What gives you the right? Would I be justified in killing 2 members of your family to save all 6 of mine? If you can not answer that question in the negative, then you are delusionally on the "moral extreme" and fail to see that "making the hard choice" will only allow whoever setup that dilemma to win.
[ Is it all about not letting a bad guy win? No, it is about staying pure and not succumbing to wrong choices simply because they are easy. Anything less will taint you, and allow you to taint others. I for one, do not wish to welcome our tainted overlords. : ) ]
Re:Pro-"Choice" (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, there were 1.21 million abortions in the United States in 2005. That means that there were at least 111,320 (9.2% of 1.21 million) fetuses aborted between 12 and 19 weeks of development (more developed than this little guy [webmd.com]). That's over 110,000 fetuses who are as able to feel pain as anyone else, and make facial expressions, being aborted every year with various descriptions of (in)convenience being the reason given by the mother.
In comparison, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports the number of fatalities for 2005 (in the U.S.) involving alcohol was 17,590 [dot.gov]. The fatalities for all other accidents was 25,920. Pediatric cancer killed 2,200 children in 2004 [medscape.com]. Deaths attributed to HIV/AIDS for children and adults was 25,000 [avert.org] in all of North America in 2008. So the deaths attributed to all these hot-button issues combined is less than the deaths of fetuses.
Regarding the "they'll still do it no matter how strict the law" argument:
This argument only works on the premise that there is nothing wrong with the activity itself. For example, statistics demonstrate that men will still rape women, regardless of how harsh the penalty (even in countries where the penalty is death). Legalized rape means fewer women die, because the rapist will not feel the need to kill the woman to prevent her from reporting him to the police. Which do you want, brassy moral superiority and thousands of women dead, or an unpleasant feeling and those women still alive?
Do you see that just as you believe that rape is an intrinsically unacceptable act, and therefore there can be no justification for it's legal acceptance, so do the anti-abortion believers believe that the abortion of a fetus for the sake of convenience (being seen as murder) is an intrinsically unacceptable act?
Re:Real easy solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to believe that public health is the motivation behind today's drug laws. That is a mistake. If you're sincerely interested in reducing consumption, you would allow people to be productive in their own personal ways, instead of penalizing them for attempting to tune out their miseries after stealing their land and enslaving them(yes, this economic system IS slavery).. You need to focus on less authoritarian methods.. prison is not the answer.
It is a shame that you are not willing to put your name - or even a fake name - behind your reply; we'll never know if you ever bother to read this or reply to it.
That said, I urge you to take a more balanced look at the issue of drug enforcement. If you step back you'll find that the enforcement of drug related offenses in reality rather closely mirrors those of alcohol related offenses. Sure, the pro-pot lobby loves to conjure up horror stories about brutalized old ladies but when you actually get to the bottom of those stories you realize two important things - one that they are exceedingly rare (occuring at about the same rate as most other law enforcement human errors), and two that the actual number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of drugs (as a fraction of the number who use) is similar to the number of people who face criminal punishment for consumption of alcohol (as a fraction of the number who drink).
The main difference here is that for some reason a significant portion of pot users have sold themselves so thoroughly on factually dubious (at best) "safety" claims that they believe themselves to be in some way better than the local drunkard.
People who want to drink know that if they don't want to get busted for drinking stay home (or take a cab / use a designated driver) and stay out of public. Pot smokers with half a wit to them do the same. I know people who use pot responsibly and have never been in any legal trouble for it.