Stifle debate? No, not NARAL

Over at Dawn Eden's blog, Raving Atheist discusses how he was banned from NARAL's Bush v. Choice blog after leaving prolife comments that refuted was NARAL's blogger Jessica Valenti was posting.

As a former prolife commenter at Bush v. Choice, I've been banned since the implementation of the new comments policy even though my posts discussed assertions made by Jessica or one of the pro-choice commenters and were not personal attacks. It is also might be notable that the comments in all of the posts before the comment policy implementation have been deleted (but then this might be because they're using TypeKey). In the many months that I posted there, I don't remember a single instance of Jessica taking the time to respond to a single prolife comment or apologize for many of her mistaken posts (like when she said O'Connor was the 5th vote upholding Roe

Even without the participation of its webmistress, it was an interesting comments section because you could interact with numerous pro-choicers who seemed to only have NARAL-fed knowledge regarding the abortion debate.

Some of the commenters at Dawn Eden are theorizing on why Jessica and/or NARAL created the comments policy and is enforcing a policy that doesn't match her description of it here and here.

I actually think the comments policy was changed in part because an older pro-choice blogger named Warsprite was giving disapproving comments regarding NARAL's strategy and tactics. I pointed out how Jessica was posting faulty information for months but it wasn't until some pro-choice commenters began to turn on Jessica that a new, restrictive comments policy was implemented. Another thing I've noticed since the "re-launch" of the blog is that Jessica has toned down her foul language a bit. Since the re-launch at the beginning of August I haven't see a single s-word or f-bomb. I did noticed one d-word and one a-word. Compare this to July, where Jessica dropped an f-bomb, 5 calls of bs, 2 s-words, and 2 d-words. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not.

We'll see if Jessica holds herself up to her own standards: "As such, we will require respectful language and behavior for all. This blog is a place for open discussion, not personal attacks."