I don’t know how I missed it. But thanks to the good work of Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, I am now aware of what Donohue described as a “positively astonishing” eight-part series in the New York Times which is “clearly the most rabid defense of abortion ever published by the mainstream media. The first installment was published on December 30; it will end on January 20. The entire series is now available online,” he adds.
I will review the entire series over the next week or so. Let’s start today with the opening 803-word-long editorial, “A Woman’s Rights.”
If the editorial is any guide, I suspect that the Times will be most upset by the growing realization that as a culture, we can no longer pretend there is no one growing inside a pregnant woman. Technology, always a two-edged sword, allows the abortionist to hone in on his helpless victim but is also a “Window on the Womb.” Ultrasound photos of unborn babies are ubiquitous.
This recognition of the unborn child’s humanity is working its way into state and federal legislation. To the Times editorial page these changes
illuminate a deep shift in American society, away from a centuries-long tradition in Western law and toward the embrace of a relatively new concept: that a fetus in the womb has the same rights as a fully formed person.
To the conspiracy-minded Times’ editorial writers, the growing recognition of fetal rights
is a story of social reaction — to the Roe decision and, more broadly, to a perceived new permissiveness in the 1970s — combined with a determined, sophisticated campaign by the anti-abortion movement to affirm the notion of fetal personhood in law and to degrade Roe’s protections.
They are half-right. Roe legitimized a search and destroy mission on unborn children, no matter how far along they are in their developmental journey, or how unjustified the reason for their extinction. The public NEVER accepted that carte blanche abortion liberty.
The “sophisticated campaign” (thank you for the backhanded compliment to NRLC’s state and federal legislative departments) was and is built on that dual recognition. First, that the unborn child is no longer “out of sight, out of mind.” Second, that a majority of the public opposes the reasons that account for well more than 90% of all abortions are performed.
The editorial is awash in cynicism and utter lack of self-awareness. To these Planned Parenthood handmaidens, no officeholder (read Republican) can ever sincerely oppose the hideous destruction of defenseless unborn children.
It must be all about power, not principle, control of women’s bodies, not compassion, and thinly-disguised racism, not a revolt against a money-grubbing Abortion Industry which targets women of color.
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One other point about the Times’ editorial. They write
Today, at least 38 states and the federal government have so-called fetal homicide laws, which treat the fetus as a potential crime victim separate and apart from the woman who carries it.
“So-called” fetal homicide laws? These laws recognize that when someone kills an unborn baby in his attack on a pregnant woman, there is a separate, second victim. This is a recognition of the obvious which is why it is so difficult for the Abortion Industry and its legion of media enablers to understand.
Beginning next week, we’ll take a further look at the eight-part New York Times series on abortion.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
