Report on Healthcare Abortion

By: Sara Gomer and Ellie Miller

Abortion has always been a women’s rights issue. Women have been fighting for power ever since they have gained the right to vote. It has always been about what women are allowed to act in society. Currently, congress is dealing with a new healthcare reform bill to allow all Americans basic healthcare coverage so no one is uninsured in the United States. However, in the bill, the topic of abortion was amended to not be covered by this new bill because it was said that “moderate democrats” would approve the bill if healthcare wasn’t covered. Our stream is about Abortion in relation to the new healthcare bill.

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Some phrases that we used when trying to find out which search phrases to use for our project are: abortion, healthcare and abortion, abortion covered by healthcare, and healthcare abortion. The phrase that had enough tweets to research yet not be overwhelming was the pairing of healthcare abortion with no and. We started with 1287 tweets on the 18^th of November and finished with 1329 on December 2^nd. Throughout the many tweets, there were both positive and negative views expressed towards the idea of the new healthcare bill covering abortion. Some were more in favor of the healthcare bill with an abortion clause and others were more in favor of the bill without an abortion clause. A majority of the tweets all had a common goal of having a healthcare bill. The statistics for our external references are as follows:

And the top 6 users-in order- with the most messages total on our topic are: Voteglobal, VoteGlobalPolls, USHealthcareIT, Health_2, Healthnewsblogs, and Healthcareintl. These six users are who we will look at in depth when looking at our search topic.

The person with the most tweets about healthcare and abortion was Voteglobal with 3.99 percent of our tweets. Voteglobal started tweeting in June 2009. Their tweets are mainly about voting, elections, and polls. The tweets also about bans, protests, and support. Voteglobal is following 2,001 people and has 1,350 followers. Their followers have been increasing since June 2009 and they also have a few networking connections. They’re connected to VoteGlobalPolls, FTA_Facillitators, Filterdnews, manic77, Iranvideos, and Headlinesindia. Their connections seem politically interested as well. In the tweets we gathered in our search, Voteglobal mostly posed the question, “ Should abortion be covered by healthcare insurance?” and sent readers to a link. They also directed people in their tweets towards a few polls to see what people thought. With multitude of information being sent out, they ran into some technical issues and answered ProChoiceGal’s question in a tweet. Overall, they were very news based on the topic.

Our second most frequent tweeter was USHealthcareITI with 3.7 percent of our tweets. In the tweets we collected for healthcare and abortion they also sent links to people. The links were mostly to articles about the abortion controversy. They seem against the abortion amendment in the articles they are asking people to read. For example one of the tweets says “Pelosi, Obama violate first amendment on abortion amendment.” Then it has a link to an article that people either in agreement, or in strong disagreement, can read. They started tweeting in August of 2009. Since they stared tweeting they have sent 3,097 tweets. They are not just about healthcare, although quite a few are. They talk about democrats, congress, Obama, insurance and other things that are big political issues. They have 251 followers. They are not following anyone. Their follwers are increasing since august 2009. The only network connection USHealthcareIT seems to have is to #39.

Third of our top six twitter users was VoteGlobalPolls with 3.13 percent of our tweets. The majority of there tweets are similar to the tweets by voteglobal. They pose the queston should abortion be covered by healthcare insurance, and then send a link for people to give their vote on the subject. VoteGlobalPolls has been tweeting since October 2009. During this time they have sent out 1388 status updates. VoteGlobalPolls is passionate about politics and voting so their topics were mainly about votes, results, polls, etc. they also talked about the things beign voted on also, like, environment, refugees, and insurance. They follow 1,173 people and have 427 followers. Since October 2009, when VoteGlobalPolls started tweeting, their follwers have been steadily increasing. They have a few network connections. They are politically active connections, like WeedFeed, VoteGlobal, and gotpolitics?.

The fourth of our top six twitter users was Health_2 with 3.13 percent of our tweets. They started tweeting in October 2009. They have a total of 2,366 tweets mostly about health issues, such as running, weight loss, diet, exercise, but it also extends to subjects like recession, reform, and Obama. They are currently following 922 people and have 529 followers. Their followers are steadily growing, however, and have been consistently since they started tweeting in October. When looking at their connections you can see they are tied to a lot of health based and concerned twitter accounts like Wholefoods, FitnessMagazine, and goodhealth. Regarding our search topic, their tweets were anti-abortion covered by healthcare. They portrayed activist feelings of the Republican Party. In their tweets they include some links, but not many. We noticed when reading their tweets that there seemed to be repeats of other people’s tweets, such as, “abortion, wellness, and other healthcare questions Los Angeles times” which was tweeted by Headlinehoncho as well. They also said, “Pelosi, Obama violate first amendment on abortion amendment.” As we showed previously in our paper USHealthcareIT tweeted the same thing. Overall, they presented an interesting view on abortion, even with retweets.

The fifth of our top six tweeters with 2.56 percent of our gathered tweets was healthnewsblogs. The majority of their tweets in our sample were about political groups in power like the house and senate. They seem to be neutral on the topic of abortion covered by healthcare. the cover both sides of the issues. They give links to both points of views. healthnewsblogs has been tweeting since Januray 2009. In that time they have sent 8396 status updates. Those updates have been about health related topics such as, blood, vaccines, aids, and h1n1. Healthnewsblogs follows six people and has 1527 followers. Since January 2009, when healthnewsblogs started tweeting, their followers have been increasing steadily. They have four network connections. They are health. Healthcare, #127, and#x2122.

The last of our top six tweeters was healthcareintl. They contributed to 2.24 percent of our total tweets with 11 tweets. Their tweets all have links to articles from them. They are talking about the complications of the abortion amendment. They seem to be fair though, as they talk about both points of views complications. They are asking people reading their tweets to go to the articles to read about the problems of the abortion amendment in the healthcare plan. Healthcareintl has been tweeting since January 2009. During the time they have been tweeting they have sent out 7,900 status updates. Their topics cover mostly health issues, as you would expect from their username, like weight, drug, health, and abortion. They have some other recent topics in their cloud though, that don’t seem to be about health, like comic and advent. Healthcareintl is following 6 people, but they have 1,031 followers at the moment. Their followers escalated very quickly when they first started using twitter, slowed down a bit from July to August, but have been growing since august fairly linearly.

All of our top six tweeters had interesting view points to present about abortion being covered by healthcare. They all presented their views clearly through their tweets, even when that view was completely neutral. One thing they all did to get people interested in their tweets was put links to articles expressing their personal opinions, and others, about abortion being covered by healthcare. We also noticed a trend of repeat tweets on groups that had shared view points about abortion being covered by healthcare. For example USHealthcareIT and Health_2 had one of the same tweets, but it was because they wanted tweeters to view the same article because they share similar points of views on the article. It was about Obama and Pelosi.

Some of the differences we noticed were how they introduced the articles they were trying to get tweeters to go to and read. Some told who the authors of the article were, like Health_2 when they tweeted, “ The Politics of loosening Helathcare abortion restirictions US news.” They were telling their readers where the article they were linking to was coming from to establish credablitty in their links. Others didn’t put where it came from and just used striking, or provocative phrases, or capitalization to get the reader interested in going to the link they had posted like, “COMPROMISE NEEDED WITH ABORTION FOES IN HEALTHCARE REFORM: The President also complained that abortion legislat..”The capitalization gets the reader’s attention so they read the quote and go to the link.