http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/RevivalMediaMythsMemo.html
An excerpt follows:
The September 17, 1996 edition of the Washington Post
contained the results of a lengthy investigation
conducted by reporters Barbara Vobejda and David M.
Brown, M.D., who interviewed several abortionists (not
those in New Jersey), and concluded:
Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is
used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy
is being terminated is not in jeopardy.... Instead,
the “typical” patients tend to be young, low-income
women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons
for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are
rarely medical.
Shortly thereafter, in February 1997, the abortion
industry's disinformation campaign completely exploded
when Ron Fitzsimmons -- then and now the executive
director of the National Coalition of Abortion
Providers (an association of 150 or so abortion
providers) -- gave a series of well-publicized
interviews in which he acknowledged that the claim
that the partial-birth abortion procedure was used
rarely and mostly in acute medical situations was
merely a “party line,” and was false. Mr. Fitzsimmons
expressed regret about his own previous (albeit minor)
role in propagating that “party line,” explaining, “I
lied through my teeth.”
The truth, Mr. Fitzsimmons said, was that “[i]n the
vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on
a healthy mother with a healthy fetus” (The New York
Times, Feb. 26, 1997). He estimated that 3,000-5,000
abortions annually are performed by the partial-birth
method. Here are two examples of clear reporting on
these revelations, including confirmations from other
pro-abortion sources:
www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA%20NYT%20lied.pdf
and
www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA%20activists%20lied.pdf
In addition, in early 1997 the PBS media criticism
program Media Matters reviewed the history of the news
media's gullible acceptance of the abortion lobby's
original disinformation about partial-birth abortion,
and concluded that it was a case study in bad
journalism. The Washington Post’s David Brown was
shown on the program saying that the Post study found,
“Cases in which the mother's life were at risk were
extremely rare. . . . Most people who got this
procedure were really not very different from most
people who got abortions.”
Is Partial-Birth Abortion Performed “Rarely”?
The Washington Post reported that a
committee of the Virginia legislature passed a bill to
ban the “rarely used” method (Jan. 28, 2003)
Likewise, the Associated Press reported, “A bill
seeking to ban a rarely performed procedure commonly
referred to as ‘partial-birth abortion’ moved along in
the [Virginia] Senate . . .” (Jan. 30, 2003) (Many
similar sightings in other media.)
Peggy Girsham, deputy managing editor of NPR News,
recently sent out a note cautioning NPR reporters, “It
is not correct to call these procedures ‘RARE’ -- it
is not known how often they are performed.” However,
in fact enough is known to demonstrate that it is
tendentious to dismiss these brutal procedures as
“rare.”
Only one state (Kansas) requires reporting the
partial-birth method separately from other methods
used at the same stages in pregnancy.[5] As noted, in
1997, Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the
National Coalition of Abortion Providers, estimated
approximately 3,000-5,000 abortions were performed by
the method annually. However, since the Supreme
Court’s 2000 ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart rendered
unenforceable the bans on partial-birth abortion that
had been enacted by more than half the states, the
number of partial-birth abortions may have climbed
since Mr. Fitzsimmons made that estimate. A voluntary
survey of known abortion providers conducted by the
Alan Guttmacher Institute (a special affiliate of
Planned Parenthood), released in January 2003, claimed
2,200 partial-birth abortions in the year 2000
(despite a survey question so convoluted that daily
practitioners of the method could have honestly
answered “zero”). This was more than triple the
absurdly low number of 650 obtained by AGI using the
same question just four years earlier – yet both
numbers were immediately accepted by some journalists
as reliable. So has the number of partial-birth
abortions more than tripled in just four years? If
so, isn’t that news?
None of these numbers justify the dismissive adjective
“rare.” Rare, compared to what?
Usually, the answer is, “Rare, compared to
first-trimester abortions performed by entirely
different methods.” But why is that the apt
comparison? It is evident that a substantial fraction
of the population, and many state and federal
lawmakers, believe that there are some important
distinctions between abortions performed by vacuum
aspiration or drugs during the first three months, and
abortions performed in the fifth month and later
involving partial delivery while the baby is still
alive.
Rare? If a virus had killed 5,000 (or 2,200) newborn
premature infants in neonatal units in one year, it
would be declared an epidemic and reported on the
evening news -- even though that would be a very
“small fraction” of all premature infants cared for in
neonatal units during a year.
=====
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country — your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day
http://shopping.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
