Multiple Choice Quiz

To take the quiz, please read the article below and answer the single multiple choice question at the end of it.  Correct answers will allow you to pass the course in Truth with honors:

New York City, N.Y., Feb 26, 2011 / 08:06 am - A New York City billboard which charged that abortion makes a mother’s womb the most dangerous place for American blacks has been removed because of criticism from local political leaders, harassment and fears of violence.
The announcement of the removal prompted strong disagreement from the billboard’s supporters.
“While this billboard causes a visceral reaction from many African Americans, it addresses a stubborn truth that 60 percent of black babies do not make it out of the womb. We must do something now,” commented Rev. Michel Faulkner of the Harlem-based New Horizon Church Ministry.
“Instead of challenging the design of the ad, we should ask why the message is true and how can we change the fact that the leading cause of death for African Americans is abortion.”
The billboard, sponsored by the group Life Always, measured 29 feet high and 16 feet wide and was erected on the night of Feb. 22. It depicted a young black girl beneath the phrase “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”
It linked to the website www.thatsabortion.com. The site criticizes abortion’s effects on the black community, offers pregnancy help information, and charges that Planned Parenthood targets minority neighborhoods with its abortion clinics.
The billboard was Life Always’ first in the state of New York. It was put up in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan about half a mile from one of New York City’s three Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
Pete Costanza, the general manager for Lamar Advertising, said the billboard was being taken down because an objector to the billboard harassed the waiters and waitresses in the Mexican restaurant below the sign.
The restaurant has no affiliation with the billboard company or the pro-life group.
“I don’t want any violence to happen around the buildings there,” Costanza told the New York Times. His decision was not about politics, but safety, he remarked. He said he was not inundated by requests for the ad’s removal.
Lamar Advertising spokesman Hal Kilshaw told the New York Times that Costanza was worried about the safety of the restaurant staff and also about reports of a protest against the billboard.
Before the decision to remove the ad, New York City Council member Letitia James had planned to hold a news conference under the billboard with prominent clergyman Rev. Al Sharpton on Feb. 25.
James said she was outraged that its sponsors decided to post the billboard to coincide with Black History Month.
She had directed her staff to start an online petition seeking its removal and she asked the liberal activist group MoveOn.org to publicize it.
The petition criticized the billboard’s “vitriolic language” and invoked the Arizona shootings committed by Jared Lee Loughner in January. It also cited an unnamed Planned Parenthood representative who called the billboard a “condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women.”
Other elected officials also voiced criticism. City Council speaker Christine C. Quinn issued a statement objecting to the comparisons of abortion to genocide.
“To refer to a woman’s legal right to an abortion as a ‘genocidal plot’ is not only absurd, but it is offensive to women and to communities of color,” she said.
City public advocate Bill de Blasio called for the billboard’s removal on Feb. 23, while the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University also wrote Costanza seeking its removal.
New York City Vital Statistics show that 59.8 percent of black pregnancies end in abortion, which means almost 1,500 babies are aborted for every 1,000 born alive.
“The reaction to this billboard is centered on trauma; abortion is traumatic, it is the emotional and physical trauma that women face after abortion that necessitates access to post-abortive healing services,” commented Life Always board member Pastor Steven Broden, who heads the Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Texas.
Life Always said it “strongly disagrees” with the decision to remove the billboard.
“(T)he billboard's message holds true, and truth has a place in the public square,” it said on Feb. 24. “The intent of the board is to call attention to the tragedy and the truth that abortion is outpacing life in the black community.”
The group said it respects all women and encourages those in need of pregnancy care to visit one of the city’s numerous pregnancy care centers which offer “hopeful alternatives” to abortion.
In January 2011, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York decried the city’s “chilling” abortion rate. A recent report found that 41 percent of all unborn babies there are killed in the womb. The city’s three Planned Parenthood abortion clinics reported nearly 17,000 abortions in 2010.

This article appeared in :
a)  The New York Times
b)  Mother Jones
c)  The Catholic News Agency
d)  Time: The Weekly News Magazine
e)  The Onion

Extra Credit Essay Question:  For whichever answer you chose provide in a short essay your reasoned opinion on why the story was not considered newsworthy by any of the other publication, listed.  Include in your essay what, again in your reasoned opinion, would have made it attractive to the editors of any of the other publications.

You have two hours.

Obama administration rolls back medical workers' conscience protections :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

I used to think that the purpose of hospitals and nurses and doctors and all of that was to help people who were sick and hurting get better and return to their homes, families and jobs healthy and happy. I figured that a government of, by and for the people would set up something it called the Department of Health and Human Services to make sure all those things were done to the best of everyone's ability.

I began to have doubts about that way of thinking when I was in high school seven or eight million years ago. That's when I learned that over in places like Germany doctors actually selected people so they could be killed, and there was a government agency, in fact several of them, that was set up to make sure they got the job done. And, about the same time, I learned that all of that was going on in a pretty big area all across the world, too, where people were being allowed to starve, or being put away in hospitals because they didn't think like the government thought they should think...and then starved, or worked to death, while doctors and nurses and pharmacists made sure they did. Lots of folks here thought that was a good idea because it was Progress.

Not too long ago, I began to read really disturbing stuff about little countries over there across the sea where doctors were being allowed to medically throttle folks who were, they decided, useless, or unhappy, or something; disturbing stuff and downright scary.

And soon I read, and heard, to my horror and shame that there were folks here, "smart" folks with letters after their names and books on library shelves that they had written who said we should kill people, and could kill people who didn't have anything to do that was good or useful. There were other folks who said that instead of killing them we should make it easier to prevent them ever coming into being in the first place. They said doctors and nurses and hospitals should provide "care" for folks who want to kill unborn babies, or prevent babies from even starting, so folks could enjoy sex without having to go home and tell Mom, Dad or their husband or wife what just happened...an accident. It would make things neater.

Soon all of this became a regulation, a court decision and laws, lots of laws, and the huge government department that makes sure all the "i"s are dotted and "t"s crossed was hell bent for leather to make sure they were, and killing and preventing was not road blocked....in hospitals and by doctors and nurses and the whole universe of "health professionals" EXCEPT: If you got an upset stomach and wanted to puke because all of this was bothering you down to the roots of your whole self. There was something called a "Conscience protection" which was a civilized way of saying, "There's enough of us anyway who want to kill people. Go have a smoke and cool off."

Then, we elect a guy to run the whole show who thinks if his daughter gets pregnant it's a punishment, and he makes sure a lady get put in charge of the Department which dots and crosses the killer's "I"s and "T"s. She's best friends with the guy, may he rest in peace, who made a killing out of killing until he got killed himself. And she, God have mercy on her soul, has just signed off on a regulation...don't you love regulations?...which says, "Conscience? Fuggedaboudit."


Obama administration rolls back medical workers' conscience protections :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)