by Doug Johnson
Some journalists (and some others) are so attached to comforting myths about partial-birth abortion that they just won't let them go — even after they have been thoroughly discredited by other journalists, and even after they have been forcefully repudiated by leading spokespersons for the abortion industry.
Worse, some of the offenders, when they are challenged for disseminating long-debunked misinformation, simply restate the misinformation without in any way addressing the substance of the challenge, or fail to respond at all.
From the time that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was first introduced in June, 1995, until early 1997, the leading pro-abortion advocacy groups vigorously asserted that the abortion method that the bill would ban was employed only hundreds of times annually, and only or nearly only in medically acute circumstances.
[Typical of innumerable such claims: “The procedure, dilation and extraction (D&X), is extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman's life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality.” (Planned Parenthood of America news release, Nov. 1, 1995). “This particular procedure is used only in about 500 cases per year, generally after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and most often when there is a severe fetal anomaly or maternal health problem detected late in pregnancy.” (National Abortion Federation factsheet, downloaded February 27, 1997)
From day one, supporters of the bill vigorously challenged these claims and provided documentation — mainly, statements by abortionists in their own writings or in interviews with various publications — that showed that the partial-birth abortion method was employed thousands of times annually, mostly on healthy babies of healthy mothers. In particular, bill supporters often cited the explicit statements of Dr. James McMahon, who developed the partial-birth abortion, and Dr. Martin Haskell, who drew it to public attention by writing an instructional paper explaining how to perform the procedure. In 1993, Haskell told American Medical News that 80% of his partial-birth abortions were “purely elective.”]
Nevertheless, the abortion lobby's claims were adopted and reported — not as disputed claims, but as fact — countless times by major U.S. broadcast and print news outlets, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, Time, ABC News, National Public Radio, and many, many others.
But by late 1996 and early 1997, this misinformation campaign collapsed under the weight of journalistic and congressional investigations. I will cite just a few of these sources here.
On September 15, 1996, the Record (Bergen-Hackensack, New Jersey) published a report by staff writer Ruth Padawer, based on separate interviews with two abortionists at a single abortion clinic in Englewood, who independently told her that they perform over 1,500 partial-birth abortions annually in that facility — triple the nationwide figure given out by pro-abortion advocacy and industry groups. As to why they performed these procedures, the Record reported what the abortionists said: “'We have an occasional amnio abnormality, but it's a minuscule amount,' said one of the doctors at Metropolitan Medical, an assessment confirmed by another doctor there. 'Most are Medicaid patients, black and white, and most are for elective, not medical, reasons: people who didn't realize, or didn't care, how far along they were. Most are teenagers.'”
The September 17, 1996 edition of the Washington Post contained the results of an investigation conducted by reporters Barbara Vobejda and David M. Brown, M.D., who interviewed several doctors (not those in New Jersey), and concluded: “Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy is being terminated is not in jeopardy…. Instead, the 'typical' patients tend to be young, low-income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical.”
The abortion lobby's misinformation campaign collapsed entirely in February 1997, when Ron Fitzsimmons — who was then and is now the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (an association of hundreds of abortion providers) — gave a series of well-publicized interviews. In those interviews, Fitzsimmons said the claim that the partial-birth abortion procedure was used rarely and mostly in acute medical situations was merely a “party line” (his term) developed by opponents of the bill, and was false. Fitzsimmons also expressed regret about his own previous (albeit minor) role in propagating what he called a “party line,” explaining, “[I] lied through my teeth.” The truth was that “in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along, Fitzsimmons said.” (The New York Times, Feb. 26, 1997.)
After Fitzsimmons spoke, other representatives of the abortion industry also refuted the mythology. Renee Chelian, the president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said, “The spin out of Washington was that it was done for medical necessity, even though we knew it wasn't so.” For more such quotes, see “Pro-choice advocates admit to deception,” by Ruth Padawer (The Record, Bergen-Hackensack, NJ, Feb. 27, 1997).
Even before Fitzsimmons blew the whistle on the disinformation campaign, the PBS program “Media Matters” (in January, 1997) devoted a segment to examining how the news media had been very gullible in accepting what turned out to be wildly erroneous and self-serving claims from the abortion lobby. In this program, Washington Post medical writer David Brown, M.D., is shown saying that based on the Post investigation of the use of partial-birth abortion, “Cases in which the mother's life were at risk were extremely rare… Most people who got this procedure really were not very different from most people who got abortions.” The entire transcript of the “Media Matters” segment makes for very instructive reading.
For further information published in 1997 on the collapse of the pro-abortion misinformation campaign, see an NRLC memo issued at the time, a column by John Leo in U.S. News & World Report showing how the truth about partial-birth abortion was deliberately concealed, an article by Matthew Scully in the National Review giving many examples of how the news media had accepted the abortion lobby's manufactured claims about partial-birth abortion, and a column by political analyst Charles E. Cook published in Roll Call: The Newspaper of Capitol Hill.
New Information?
What new information has come to light since February 1997 only confirms that the partial-birth method is usually used in circumstances not involving any acute threat to the mother or grave disorder of the baby. Kansas became the only state to enact a law that requires reporting of partial-birth abortions separately from other abortion methods. The first year the law was in effect (1999), Kansas abortionists reported that they performed 182 partial-birth abortions on babies who were defined by the abortionists themselves as “viable,” and they also reported that all 182 of these were performed for “mental” (as opposed to “physical”) health reasons.
In January 2003, the Alan Guttmacher Institute — an affiliate of Planned Parenthood — published a survey of abortion providers that estimated that 2,200 abortions by the method were performed in the year 2000. While that figure is surely low for reasons discussed by NRLC elsewhere, it is more than triple the number that AGI estimated in its most recent previous survey (for 1996).
In March, 2003, Ron Fitzsimmons — still the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers — was asked if he wanted to withdraw the assessment he gave to The New York Times in 1997 (quoted above). He said, “No, no, no, no. I'm not recanting any of that stuff. In terms of when it's done or how it's done, nothing has changed, as far as I know.” Informed of a news story that asserted that the method is used mostly to save a mother's life or in cases of fetal deformity, Fitzsimmons said, “It's amazing that a lot of people still think that, despite the evidence to the contrary.”
So, Is the Mythology Dead?
To summarize what appears above: The claim that the abortion method banned by the pending bill, partial-birth abortion, is performed mainly or only in medically acute circumstances, was definitely discredited by February 1997 if not earlier — disproved by congressional investigators and by journalists for top newspapers, and repudiated by spokespersons for the abortion industry itself.
So is the mythology dead?
Not by a long shot. Even though it takes no more than a few minutes with Google to easily find information such as that cited above, and much more like it, some reporters, editorial writers, and pundits refuse to let go of the blatant misinformation. They are once again propagating the myth that most (or all) partial-birth abortions are performed because of grave threat to the mother or major fetal disorders. Moreover, in most cases so far, those propagating the myths have refused to either run corrections or provide documentation of their claims — or even, in some cases, to respond at all.
Here is a sampling of recent sightings of the long-discredited mythology, by no means exhaustive, compiled on June 11, 2003: [NOTE: All of the quotations below were in the voices of the newspapers themselves. That is, it is the newspaper, or the reporter or commentator, who is making the assertion — NOT some attributed source.]
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
From news analysis, “California abortion rights threatened,” by Bob Egelko, March 15, 2003:
[Regarding the abortion method that would be banned by the bill under consideration in Congress:] “It is generally performed late in pregnancy after discovery of damage to or abnormalities in the fetus.”
[Egelko wrote to me on June 5, “I believe my article was accurate,” but has refused to provide any authority for the assertion or to address any of the documentation cited. No response from editors or “reader's representative.”]
THE BOSTON GLOBE
From “Senate OK's ban on a late-term form of abortion,” by Susan Milligan, March 14, 2003:
“Because of fetal abnormalities or medical conditions threatening a woman, doctors employ the technique between the 20th and 26th weeks of a pregnancy when the head of the fetus is enlarged and unable to easily pass through a woman's dilated cervix.”
[On June 4, 2003, the Globe ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, wrote that new guidelines had been adopted, among these, “the Globe would not say or imply that the procedure known as partial birth abortion is used only when medically necessary — thus recognizing that [it] is also used by healthy women who carry a healthy fetus. I also believe that any mention of the bill's lack of an exemption for the health of the mother should be accompanied by a mention of the exemption that does exist to protect the life of the mother.”]
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
From news story, “Anti-abortion lobby counting on victories in 108th Congress,” by Pamela Brogan, December 17, 2002. “A so-called partial-birth abortion is defined generally as a late-term abortion procedure in which the fetus is aborted after it is partly outside the mother's body. It is usually performed in cases when the mother's life is threatened or the fetus is deformed.” [This dispatch appears, with a different headline, here.)
[On Feb. 20, 2003, after repeated requests, Brogan sent an e-mail purporting to quote three sources in support of her claim, but in each case the sources could not be found to say what she quoted them as saying; details on request. No response from her editors to multiple communications.]
MIAMI HERALD (EDITORIAL)
From editorial, “A Flawed Bill,” June 6, 2003, “Invariably, in the extremely rare situations when the procedure is used, extraordinary circumstances are involved: The rape of a mentally incapacitated women incapable of knowing even the consequences of the act; the brutal assault of a 12-year-old child by a relative; a woman weakened by an illness whose life would be endangered by carrying a pregnancy to full term.”
[On June 12, the paper posted a portion of my letter challenging the statement, but omitted my quotation from Ron Fitzsimmons of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.]
THE GUARDIAN (U.K.)
On June 6, 2003, The Guardian published two articles by its correspondent in Washington, D.C., Suzanne Goldenberg, concerning certain pro-life issues currently under consideration in our federal and state legislative bodies: “US abortion ban sets stage for court battle,” and “When does life really begin?” In the article “When does life really begin?,” Goldenberg wrote: “The ban on 'partial-birth abortions' — which are generally performed in the second or third trimester of pregnancy if the fetus is so malformed it would die at birth, or if continued pregnancy puts the woman's life at risk — is a huge setback for the pro-choice lobby.” In “U.S. abortion ban sets stage for court battle,” Goldenberg wrote that the partial-birth abortion method “is a last resort used during the final stages of pregnancy when the fetus is fatally malformed. Rightwingers call it partial birth abortion, but the procedure is only generally used for hydrocephalic babies and involves collapsing their enlarged skulls.” [No response, no correction]
Professor George Lakoff, author, linguist George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at Berkeley, on “To the Point,” a program produced at KCRW-FM in Los Angeles and broadcast on various NPR stations, June 10, 2003. Asked by the host, Warren Olney, to analyze the term “partial-birth abortion,” Lakoff replied as follows — this is a verbatim transcription from the Real Player file posted at the KCRW website:
“Partial-birth abortion is not a medical description. The medical procedure, as I understand it, is a procedure that applies in a quarter to one-half of all cases [sic — he apparently meant to say one-quarter or one-half PERCENT of all abortions], and these are cases too in where the fetus is not viable, is not likely to live a life — perhaps doesn't have a brain — and where the mother's health or life would be in danger . . . You have an unviable child, one who can't really live. Also, there would be a health and endangerment of the mother's life. So the term 'partial-birth abortion' sort of hides the issues that are really there in that operation.”
To see the original memo from NRLC Legislative Director, Doug Johnson, complete with links click here.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
