Two abortion-related stories in the New York Times revealed the paper's hostility to the pro-life movement and its evasiveness in addressing the gruesome details of late-term (and beyond) abortion.
“Trump Court Pick Causes Stir With Abortion View,” in Wednesday’s Times, on a potential roadblock for Neomi Rao, Brett Kavanaugh’s replacement on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, wasn’t as embarrassingly label-heavy as previous ideological scare-mongering against “conservatives” in the Times. But it still contained a hefty dose of extraneous “conservative” labeling: 12 “conservative” labels in non-quoted material in a 1,200-word story. (The common conjunction “and” appeared just a little more often -- 16 times -- in non-quoted material in the same story.)
Political reporters Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman teamed up for this one (click “expand”):
An Indian-American and a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, Ms. Rao, 45, had the backing of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group that has been the main recruiting ground for the president’s highly successful effort to put his stamp on the judiciary.
And as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Ms. Rao is seen as an ally of the deregulatory efforts that are a large part of the conservative legal agenda.
But Ms. Rao, who is on leave as the director and founder of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, now faces questions from within her own party and specifically, from Senator Josh Hawley, a newly elected Republican of Missouri and member of the Judiciary Committee.
(....)
For the most committed social conservatives, Ms. Rao is suspect, despite her conservative credentials, because she has little written record on the issue and is whispered to personally be an abortion rights advocate....
(....)
References in some of Ms. Rao’s past legal writing describing the abortion rights movement as “anti-abortion” rather than “pro-life,” the term preferred among anti-abortion campaigners, have also raised red flags for him.
(Note: The Times also prefers the term “anti-abortion” to “pro-life.”)
Meanwhile, after the defeat in the Senate of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), Times science reporter Denise Grady tried to quell any qualms from the paper’s liberal readership under the soothing headline: “‘Executing Babies’: Here Are the Facts Behind Trump’s Misleading Abortion Tweet -- Infants are rarely born alive after abortion procedures, and if they are, doctors do not kill them.”
Apparently the name “Dr. Kermit Gosnell” never made it to the Times. The paper did actually cover the abortion doctor’s murder trial, thinly and reluctantly, after Gosnell was charged with killing seven viable late-term infants by “snipping” their necks with scissors.
Grady wrote Tuesday:
The latest battle in the nation’s continuing war over abortion involves a federal bill called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Senate Democrats this week blocked the bill from reaching a vote, and President Trump responded with an angry tweet.
The bill would require doctors to use all means available to save the life of a child born alive after an attempted abortion. They must, it says, “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child” as they would for “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
Then the story (on nytimes.com only) displayed a Trump tweet from Monday night that read: “Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children. The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth....”
She quickly reassured readers who might ask, “How often are infants born alive after attempted abortions?” She then continued:
It hardly ever happens, according to Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He performs abortions and is a spokesman for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, where he leads a committee on health care for underserved women.
A healthy fetus becomes viable -- potentially able to survive outside the womb -- at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Only about 1.3 percent of abortions in the United States in 2015 were performed in or after the 21st week of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Less than 1 percent of all abortions are done after 24 weeks, and many are performed because the fetus has a fatal condition or the pregnant woman’s life or health is at severe risk.
While 1.3% sounds low, it's only relative to the high number of abortions performed in 2015. The raw figure was in fact over 5,000 in 2015, because the number of total abortions tabulated by the CDC for that year was over 400,000 (according to Table 7 here), which is perhaps why Grady skips the numbers in favor of expressing them in a less-disturbing percentage.
