By Dave Andrusko
Photo: Gage Skidmore
CC BY-SA 2.0
In the face of enormous blowback from his party, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he had “misunderstood” a question about his position on abortion. Initially the long-shot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination “said he would support a federal ban on abortion at some point after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy,” according to Ramesh Ponnuru. At that point Kennedy got an “earful” and beat a hasty retreat. His campaign hastened to say, “Mr. Kennedy’s position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose.”
Ponnuru, who is the editor of National Review, said “That puts him right in line with today’s Democratic Party, in which support for legal abortion at any stage of pregnancy is a nearly unchallenged orthodoxy.”
But who knew? Who knows the Democrat Party is the party of unchecked, unregulated, and unlimited abortion? Mr. Ponnuru writes, “It’s a Democratic consensus of which many voters are unaware, because journalists have done more to obscure than to illuminate it.”
His guest column for the Washington Post lays out, chapter and verse, how Democrats (aided by journalists) use “verbal sleights-of-hand” to talk to two audiences. “The general public thinks the candidates are taking a moderate stance compatible with tighter restrictions on abortion in more advanced stages of pregnancy,” he writes. “Activists in favor of liberal abortion laws understand that they will oppose any restrictions.”
But if you listen carefully, it’s clear Democrats are speaking out of both sides of their mouths on abortion. If the legacy media were the least bit interested in getting the truth out to the public, this would be rapidly exposed. But, as we know, truth telling takes a back seat to furthering their mutual support for unlimited abortion.
How does the media cover for Democrats on abortion? Let me count just some of the ways illustrated by Ponnuru.
“When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently told Dasha Burns of NBC News that “a lot of the left” oppose legal protections for unborn human beings all the way until birth, she responded: “There’s no indication of Democrats pushing for that.” News outlets from the Associated Press to CBS to The Post have offered similar “corrections” when Republicans have said that Democrats favor keeping abortion legal even late in pregnancy.
What about so-called “fact-checkers”? They tend “to make the same mistakes when concluding otherwise.”
They emphasize that abortions late in pregnancy are “rare.” That’s a separate question from whether Democrats want them to be legal. It’s also a disputable judgment call. The Post’s fact-check noted that abortions after 20 weeks, “when medical technology makes it increasingly possible to save a premature infant,” made up only 1.3 percent of all abortions. This percentage, the same Post fact-checker acknowledged, amounts to at least 10,000 late abortions in total each year.
What about the usual diversions, both from Democratic politicians and their fellow travelers in the media, about the circumstances in which women have these abortions? In a deeply convincing fashion Ponnuru writes
The fact-checkers also commonly fault Republicans for not offering the context that abortion late in pregnancy, as the AP puts it, “typically happens if the fetus has a low probability of survival.” The AP cites no evidence on this point. A 2013 review found, however, that most abortions done between weeks 20 and 28 are not “for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” A recent profile of Warren Hern, a doctor who specializes in abortions late in pregnancy, included his estimate that “at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic do not have these diagnoses.” [Underlining added.]
One other very important point which is rarely spelled out by the media:
Nearly all Democrats in Congress, along with the Biden administration, support the Women’s Health Protection Act, which engages in the same bait-and-switch as Roe. Abortion can be forbidden after viability, it says, unless “the treating health care provider” considers it necessary to protect a patient’s “health.” If that weren’t enough, the proposed law says courts should “liberally construe” its terms.
This is a very helpful discussion, loaded with information. Please take the time to read “Even RFK Jr. won’t dissent from the Democratic party line on abortion”. It’s a real eye-opener