A number of media outlets picked up stories on yesterday’s March for Life.
Some report attendance of only 10,000 whereas LifeSiteNews reports that a record-breaking 25,000 people participated in this year’s March. Twenty-one Members of Parliament attended as well as two Senators.
Laura Payton and Kady O’Malley live tweeted the entire event for CBC and wrote a few pieces as well.
The National Post ran some stories, including the following:
- John Invinson wrote about the March, MP Mark Warawa’s statement on gendercide, and the importance of taking small practical steps:
The pro-lifers in the House have learned the lesson of the Harper playbook that helped take the Conservative party from the wilderness to power: Make progress in small, practical steps.
- Michael Den Tent wrote about how PM Stephen Harper is “de facto leader of Canada’s pro-choice movement.”
There was also coverage by Canada.com, iPolitics, London Free Press, NG News, Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, The Star Phoenix, Ottawa Citizen, The Gazette, Time Colonist, Leader-Post, and The Guardian. (I don’t have links for the last few as I came across them through a subscription-based database.)
Is this more coverage than years past?
_______________________
Andrea adds: Yes, that’s my impression. I also heard radio coverage on CBC and 580 CFRA.
by 
This is from the Globe and Mail:
“The crowd drew 10,000 to 12,000 people, RCMP said. That included a much smaller group of pro-choice protesters who left early after the request of police.”
Do you guys know what that was about?
This is also from the Globe and Mail:
“In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled banning abortion was unconstitutional.”
Is that true? I thought that the Morgantaler ruling struck down Canada’s abortion law because it was being inconsistently applied across the country. To wit: the law said that a woman had to take her request for an abortion to a “therapeutic abortion committee” which would decide whether or not she was eligible for an abortion. Not all hospitals had therapeutic abortion committees, and some of the committees would grant the request of every woman who came across their docket, while others denied everyone. The law was struck down because these therapeutic abortion committees were inconsistent across the country, not because it is unconstitutional to ban abortion.
Hey Melissa,
Some papers typically report lower numbers. If they are relying on the RCMP, they have to rely on the ability of one or two officers to eyeball the crowd.
CLC, who organizes the March, places a senior staff person on a narrow street with a counter and that person clicks the counter each time 10 people walk by. It’s a far more accurate count. That’s the source of the original estimate.
I’m not one to scream about a conspiracy theory. It may just be as simple as that.
And yes, Josh Wingrove, who wrote the article for the Globe and Mail, got Morgentaler wrong. Your understanding of the case is correct.
In fact, in the decision, the justices said multiple times that Parliament was free to pass new legislation restricting abortion access that could be found constitutional. I’m guessing he didn’t read the decision. Maybe he just didn’t have time. I don’t know.
I’m hoping Josh has a Google Alert and sees your comment. A quick skim of the case’s headnote alone would clarify for him what the decision really said.
Thanks for replying so quickly, Faye.
Actually, my first question had more to do with why the pro-choicers were asked to leave by the police. Did you hear anything about that?
I was looking at a pro-choicer’s twitter feed early today and there was surprise expressed at that because they weren’t asked to leave by police.
Needs more investigation, but that is what I read this morning.
Research shows there is a tendency for organizers of any event to over estimate crowd numbers, understandable, and police to underestimate, not understandable. Media tends to give high or low estimates depending on who or what the crowd represents and how it supports the ‘story’. Surely good journalism would want to do a more accurate job. There is hope.
The CLC of clicker counting every ten people has some credibility ( forewarning: repetitive action injury looms ahead). There are ‘professional’ resources of crowd counting. The fifty year old Jacobs’s method: divide crowd into sections, count the number of persons in a section and then multiply that by the number of sections is widely used though it is a rough method. There are companies that offer crowd counting this services using more sophisticated methods and they speak of 10% accuracy. Simple ‘googling’ can find a company like Digital Design and many others that do this work.
Maybe a journalist or CLC will read this.
Well, Faye, I googled R. v. Morgentaler, and did a bit of reading, and apparently Josh Wingrove can be forgiven his ignorance.
Here is a summary of the case, put together by the depts of History, PoliSci, and the Faculty of Law at the U of A. Notice how they say how Morgentaler allowed women to have the same control over their bodies as men.
And here is an article from the Faculty of Law at the U of T: “R v Morgentaler: how far we have come, and still need to go.”
Those were the top two Google entries under the Wikipedia article. If you were a journalist, and didn’t have time to read the Morgentaler decision, (really, who does?) would you not think that a Faculty of Law at a major Canadian university would have a decent interpretation of the case?
What on Earth do we do about this?
Hey David,
Thanks for the info on crowd counting. I’ll mention it to CLC next time I see their staff. That’s a good idea and good information to have.
Hey Melissa,
I’m kind of surprised about the CCS wording. That’s a fairly trusted site. Perhaps I’ll contact the school.
Le sigh.