For further information:
Jessica Rodgers, 202-626-8833 or
mediarelations@nrlc.org
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Mainstream news
media again subjects Republican pro-life positions
to hyper-scrutiny and extrapolation, while ignoring
President Obama's positions on current legislation
on late abortions and abortion for sex selection
The following
statement was released by the National Right to Life
Committee (NRLC), which is the nationwide federation
of state right-to-life organizations. Aside from
the direct quotes from National Right to Life
President Carol Tobias, any part of the statement
may be attributed to NRLC as an organization.
WASHINGTON -- "The
mainstream news media is once again demonstrating
its eagerness to use any excuse to portray a
Republican presidential ticket as out of the
mainstream on abortion, while ignoring the truly
extreme positions taken by the pro-abortion
candidate -- this year, President Obama," said
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to
Life Committee (NRLC).
The mainstream news
media is again busy ginning up stories exploring the
outer parameters of the abortion-related policy
positions of pro-life Republican candidates, even
where this involves remote, theoretical scenarios --
while demonstrating a near-total disinterest in
putting the spotlight on the outer parameters of the
"abortion rights" positions embraced by President
Obama, even on matters under current legislative
consideration.
The
current media focus is on the position of the
Romney-Ryan ticket on prohibiting abortion in cases
of rape or incest. Governor Romney has been quite
clear that he supports rape and incest exceptions to
a law providing general protection for unborn
children. This is the same position taken by
pro-life President George W. Bush, who did much to
advance federal policies to move towards a society
in which all were "welcomed in life and protected in
law."
According to a
2005 study published by the Guttmacher Institute,
"Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions," one percent of
the women who were surveyed while seeking abortions
reported having an abortion because they were
victims of rape. Legislation to prohibit early
abortion in cases of rape and incest is not under
consideration in Congress. Indeed, since 1993,
Congress provided federal funding for
abortion in cases of rape and incest. Starting that
year, those exceptions were added to the Hyde
Amendment (the law which generally prohibits federal
Medicaid funding for abortion), in addition to the
original life-of-mother exception. When the
rape/incest exceptions were added to the law, the
Clinton Administration estimated that it would
result in federal funding of abortion "nationally to
about 1,000 women," despite the huge size of the
federal Medicaid program (over 33 million persons
covered in 1995, and over 50 million today).
(Letter from President Clinton to Gov. Robert P.
Casey of Pennsylvania, February 22, 1994).
Subsequent reports issued by HHS showed that the
actual number of federally funded abortions
nationwide, even with the rape-incest exceptions,
ranged between 112 and 458 nationwide between FY
1994 and FY 2007.
Much has been made of
Congressman Paul Ryan's cosponsorship of
the "Sanctity of Human Life Act" (H.R. 212). This
resolution-like bill affirms the general principle
that every individual member of the species homo
sapiens should be recognized as a human being. It
does not contain any prohibition of anything, or any
penalty for anything. The details of implementing
such a principle, including the type and definition
of exceptions to any enacted law protecting unborn
children, would have to be contained in language
enacted by elected legislators
-- generally reflecting, presumably, the majority
views of their constituents.
When covering such
legislation, many reporters show themselves willing
to embrace even extravagant extrapolations as
factual, or to adopt tendentious, advocacy
phraseology as their own. For example, Stephanie
Condon, identified as "a political reporter for
CBSNews.com," wrote in a "news"
story on
August 15, concerning Ryan and the "Sanctity of
Human Life Act" [italics added for
emphasis]: "Supporters of reproductive rights have
loudly pointed out that this type of
legislation would not only outlaw abortion but
potentially some forms of contraception or even in
vitro fertilization. Personhood initiatives are
so extreme that even card-carrying conservatives
like former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour have
expressed concerns that they go too far . . ."
Despite the
remoteness of these matters from any legislation
currently under consideration in Congress or likely
to be considered by the next Congress, the
mainstream news media finds them worthy of sustained
attention. Yet there is little interest by these
journalists in performing a symmetrical exploration
of the outer parameters of President Obama's policy
positions on abortion -- even with respect to bills
that are under active consideration in Congress.
For example,
recently NRLC brought it to the attention of
Congress that currently, in the District of Columbia
-- a federal jurisdiction -- abortion
is legal for any reason, until the moment of birth.
(This is because the "District Council," utilizing
delegated congressional authority, repealed the
entire abortion law.) On July 31, 2012, by a solid
majority of 66 votes (220-154), the U.S.
House of Representatives voted for a bill (H.R.
3803) to overturn this policy,
and replace it with a ban on abortion after 20 weeks
fetal age (the beginning of the sixth month), except
to save the life of the mother. At the same time,
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) filed the same measure as
an amendment to cybersecurity legislation (S.
3414) -- a White House priority -- that was pending
in the Senate when the August recess began.
So, what is President
Obama's position on the pending legislation that has
already commanded a substantial majority in the U.S.
House, and that is at least technically still
pending in the U.S. Senate? Good question -- but
the mainstream media has been almost entirely
uninterested in asking it. At the July 31 White
House press briefing, one desultory question was
posed to Jay Carney about the bill, to which Carney
responded that he had not spoken to the President
about this particular bill (although it had 223
cosponsors, and was to be voted on later that day in
the House).
There was no follow up.
Another example: On
May 31, 2012, the U.S. House took up the Prenatal
Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 3541), a bill to
prohibit the use of abortion for purposes of sex
selection in the United States. Only one organ
of the mainstream news media showed any interest in
ascertaining what President Obama's position was on
the bill: ABC News' Jake Tapper pressed for an
answer, and obtained it the night before the House
vote -- President Obama opposed the bill. His
reason? "The government should not intrude in
medical decisions or private family matters in this
way.” But aside from
one-time, low-profile coverage on the ABC News blog,
Obama's position on
this legislation has gone virtually unmentioned in
the news media -- although the
bill commanded a substantial bipartisan majority
(246-168) in the U.S. House on May 31. A
recent poll found
that 77 percent of the public (80 percent of women,
74 percent of men) favors banning the use of
abortion for sex selection.
Thus, while consumers
of the mainstream news media are likely to view and
read countless stories that affirm that Mitt Romney
or Paul Ryan have expressed opposition to abortion
"even in cases of [fill in the blank]," they are
likely to see far fewer reports that President Obama
supports allowing legal abortion "even when used for
sex selection," or exploring President
Obama's position on whether abortion should be
allowed "even up to the point of birth" in the
nation's capital. For the mainstream news media,
the "even in cases of . . ." knife only cuts in one
direction.
"For the most
part, the mainstream news media prefer to
characterize President Obama's position in terms of
hazy generalizations, avoiding specifics such as his
actions to allow unrestricted abortion for sex
selection and late abortions," said NRLC
President Carol Tobias.
To read an article on some of the
extreme pro-abortion positions taken by Barack Obama
before he won election as president -- and how the
new media distorted them during the final months of
the 2008 campaign -- click
here.
Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life
Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state
right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local
chapters, is the nation's oldest and largest
grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the
flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works
through legislation and education to protect
innocent human life from abortion, infanticide,
assisted suicide and euthanasia.
