Imagine my surprise when over a bowl of Wheaties I read a gushy, “what-a-guy” tribute to abortionist LeRoy Carhart on the front page of the Washington Post. Strike that: the only surprise is the timing.
Go back with me to last November. I wrote about how “Late, late, late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart has told local Nebraska media that he was hightailing it out of town” to set up his grisly shop elsewhere. Why? “He’s leaving because of Nebraska’s historic Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. This law is bad news for a man who specializes in taking the lives of unborn children so advanced in age that it makes even harden abortionists blanche.”
Carhart told Rob Stein of the Washington Post the locales he would be looking at would have “more favorable” laws and promised “we’re going to do the maximum the law allows.’”
Locally, Carhart settled on Germantown, Maryland, which is, Lena H. Sun of the Washington Post tells us, “accessible from three airports.” (Maryland was selected ‘because it has some of the least-restrictive abortion laws in the nation” and “is centrally located on the East Coast.”)
The most obvious explanation for the puff piece appearing now is that some pro-lifers will begin a nine day prayer vigil beginning this Saturday.
Super-laudatory press pieces are the coin of Carhart’s realm. The fact that he performs abortions only a handful of abortionists have the stomach for—far from making his actions problematic—only serves to ennoble him in the minds of various reporters.
We only have Carhart’s word for who he is aborting, under what conditions, and how late in pregnancies.
In a slavishly favorable Newsweek piece, prior to moving, we learn that “In the coming months, Carhart plans to open a new late-term clinic in the Midwest, where he can see the women [the late abortionist George] Tiller saw: in the late second and early third trimesters, their life or health at risk, and carrying either a viable or nonviable fetus.”
In the Post today we read Carhart “provides about 60 abortions per month in Germantown; of that total, about six to 10 are provided later in pregnancy.” How late? Carhart “declines to specify how late,” Sun writes. Elsewhere in the story Sun drops this on us: “Most of the abortions Carhart performs are between the 18th and 24th weeks of pregnancy. If the medical situation warrants, he can perform one as late as 32 weeks.”
But Carhart’s nobility—at least to folks like reporters for the Post—extends to his function as a cheerleader. We learn that he “wants to create an informal coalition of doctors and clinic administrators who would meet regularly to share medical information and tips for handling protests and increasing morale.”
But publications like the Post and Newsweek are always worried that there won’t be enough abortionists with iron-cast stomachs and consciences hardened like steel. That’s why they are delighted to inform the reader that while Carhart is the only abortionist at the Germantown clinic (it is “small”), “four other doctors — including one from the Washington area — have asked to train with him.”
Speaking of his “informal coalition,” Carhart told Sun, “Even though you feel like you’re alone in the world, it’s good to find out that there’s . . . people like you out there that are alone with you.”
Alas, that’s true. But it is equally true that because of what Sun gently refers to as the “stigma surrounding abortion,” there are fewer and fewer “people like you out there.”
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
