After the House passed the “Born-Alive Act,” which would give life status to a baby which is born alive during an attempted abortion, the Associated Press insisted upon referring to the live baby as a “fetus,” even though it would be fully outside its mother’s body, National Review Online noticed.
An excerpt from the March 13 piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez brought to our attention by ex-MRCer Richard Kimble:
Yesterday, as expected, the House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The bill is as simple as they get. It gives legal status to a baby who is born, literally, alive. The baby, in the circumstances the bill covers, is “alive” in anyone's dictionary; as the bill defines it: The “complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother” of a baby who “breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.”
But if you get your news from the Associated Press wire, as a good portion of the news-reading and -gathering world does, this is what you found yesterday after the vote: Headline: “House Oks Fetus Protection Bill.” First sentence: “The House voted Tuesday to define a fetus that is fully outside a woman's body as having been ‘born alive,’ which would give the fetus legal protection.”…
[A] bit about partial-birth abortion, as it turns out, is exactly what the Associated Press added into their story later last night, after hearing some pro-life criticism of the original piece. In a middle-of-the night revision of the evening story on the bill, “House Expands Protection of Fetuses” appeared with this additional error: “The legislation is aimed at an abortion procedure critics call ‘partial-birth’ in which a fetus is partially delivered before being destroyed. Thirty states and the District of Columbia already have laws against the procedure.”
The bill, of course, has nothing to do with partial-birth abortion, which is, as is suggested by its name, partial birth: The baby is only partly delivered; the skull is punctured so the infant dies before it is legally born….
Whether it be ignorance (they didn't read the bill? “Thomas” was down?) or advocacy-purposefully misleading readers-the press seems to care not one wit about telling the truth when it comes to this latest bill to pass the House.
And despite folks who think the bill is unnecessary, it speaks to something that is happening in hospitals and clinics today….
Pro-abortion groups who originally opposed the bill backed off. Pro-abortion congressmen who thought the bill unnecessary voted for it (it passed by a voice vote). The press ought to get with it. Infanticide isn't in style with most of America yet.
To read Lopez’s piece in full:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment031302.shtml
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
