By DEXTER DUGGAN
Within living memory, news film from Europe had to be flown across the Atlantic Ocean to New York before it could be shown on U.S. television networks. No real-time repartee occurred between the New York studio and the distant overseas correspondent looking into a camera lens.
Thanks to technological advances, though, today’s news consumers routinely expect to watch reporters anywhere on the globe speaking instantly and directly with the Manhattan news headquarters. Get your fresh facts while they’re hot.
One area of the news, however, where communication apparently hasn’t improved over the decades is reporting the status of abortion law in the United States, and how radical it is.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court mandated expansive permissive abortion nearly 45 full years ago, way back on January 22, 1973, the impact of its Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions still seems cloudy to some media even in the very city where they were promulgated, the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
By specifically using a wide, vague definition of “health” in Bolton, the High Court legalized abortion even in the final months of pregnancy, overturning even “liberal” abortion laws of that time like New York’s, which had still regarded such late abortions as homicide.
It was remarkable overreach that makes one wonder a bit if even the elderly males on the Supreme Court who voted for it realized what they were doing. But dominantly pro-abortion media rushed in then, and ever since, to protect Roe and Doe by minimizing them to the public whenever possible.
When Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton defended such late abortions in the third presidential debate last year in mid-October, she tried to put a compassionate face on the situation, and tried to deflect about how the “health” definition is applied, but she didn’t deny they’d been legalized.
But when the Trump administration recently called attention to the U.S. being one of only seven nations on Earth that allow such permissive abortions, The Washington Post thought it had caught Donald Trump on another statement it could ridicule him for. However, after investigating, its fact-checker found the statement to be true.
The Executive Office of the President issued a statement on October 2 saying: “The United States is currently out of the mainstream in the family of nations, in which only seven out of 198 nations allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. America’s children deserve the stronger protections that HR 36 would advance.”
The House bill number referred to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, sponsored by Cong. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) and 170 co-sponsors.
The administration statement said: “HR 36 would generally make it unlawful for any person to perform, or attempt to perform, an abortion of an unborn child after 20 weeks post-fertilization, with limited exceptions. The bill, if enacted into law, would help to facilitate the culture of life to which our nation aspires.”
The Washington Post’s fact-checker said the administration’s “statistic seemed dubious at first, because it seemed extreme for just seven countries out of 198 to allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. But upon further digging, the data back up the claim.”
The Post normally awards “Pinocchios” to those telling lies, but in this case the newspaper did the reverse, awarding its rare “Geppetto Checkmark when a factoid surprisingly turns out to be true, as in this case.”
Could it actually be that a news operation with all the resources of the Post still hadn’t grasped how radical the Supreme Court’s society-rattling abortion mandate was from nearly 45 years earlier?
Nearly 45 full years ago. Coincidentally, former President Lyndon Johnson died on the very same day Roe and Doe were announced. Do the Post and its other powerful media pals realize that Johnson is dead and buried yet? Maybe they better send investigative teams out to explore Johnson’s current health.
After all, that’s merely nine presidents serving in the White House since then. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump. Is it too soon to understand Johnson’s mortality? Is it too soon to comprehend Roe and Doe?
The Wanderer asked three sources to comment on dominant media’s difficulty in coping with these facts.
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard replied: “It is impossible to be neutral in the battle between good and evil. That applies to the media as well. Sadly, the majority of them are 100 percent committed to a liberal agenda, and that means championing abortion rights as part of the overall effort.
“What is interesting is that while some of the media I know are ardently pro-abortion rights, a lot of them are actually uncomfortable with the topic and maintain their position out of loyalty to the overall liberal agenda,” Querard said. “That’s why so many don’t write about it or talk about it. They’d rather not.
“That means the majority of the media is made up of abortion advocates and those who choose silence,” he said.
Mallory Quigley, communications director of the Washington-based, pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, told The Wanderer: “SBA List is encouraged that The Washington Post fact-checkers gave their stamp of approval on the well-researched statistic from our education arm, the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
CLI researchers pored over international abortion laws to discover the harsh reality: that the U.S. is only one in seven countries across the globe to allow elective abortion after five months — more than halfway through pregnancy — and a point by which unborn children can feel pain,” Quigley said.
“In my personal experience many pro-life people, much less reporters with a ‘pro-choice’ bias, are aware that Roe and Doe allow for abortion on demand up until the moment of birth, because the so-called ‘health’ exception is so broad, and it is determined by the abortionist who is getting paid to end the life of the child,” she said.
We Just Followed Orders
Northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson used to work in major television news in Los Angeles, then in San Francisco. She told The Wanderer:
“Abortion is one of those hot-button issues for the so-called mainstream media. I admit, I was part of that media for years and, looking back on those years, we rarely if ever covered any controversy about abortion.
“I can’t say it was a ‘policy’ of those newsrooms to avoid the issue since I was not in a decision-making position. Whether as street reporter, investigative reporter or program news anchor, I did not decide the stories covered,” Simpson said.
“The news director and producers did that. We did, as they say, just followed orders as to what stories were covered or not.
“The one time it was an issue for me was after Roe v. Wade and I had the opportunity to video an actual abortion. The news director and producers thought it would be a bold thing to do. They sent me and a crew to the clinic and we filmed it — including the tube through which the ’tissue’ from the abortion passed as it moved into a collection container,” she said.
“When it came time to put the news piece together for airing that night, everyone said ‘NO, we can’t show that!’ — meaning the tube and the contents — which, I might add, were just tan in color,” Simpson said. “There was no blood visible nor any pieces of the fetus.
“Everyone saying ‘no’ was a man. I was the only woman in the newsroom and the only person saying ‘yes.’ My contention was that if we were going to ‘show a real abortion,’ we had an obligation to show it all,” she said. “In addition, I was the reporter on the scene and I felt I had an obligation to the audience.
“The men were all ‘brave and bold’ about showing an abortion, until it came to showing something,” Simpson said. “Result: We did not show the tubing and I was disgusted at those newsroom decision-makers with whom I worked daily. I never did another abortion story.”
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