What you’re about to read is a shining example of when abortion coverage dives so far in the tank for its subject that it surpasses advocacy and reaches borderline idolatry.

[T]he State of Alabama has continued its assault on her work like hers: In May, the governor signed into law a provision banning abortion clinics from operating within 2,000 feet of a public school. It just so happens the Alabama Women’s Center is across the street from a magnet school.

Note the complete lack of discussion as to why this “assault on her work” is improper. It’s common to omit the pro-life side of the story, but to not even feel the need to explain your own? You might think thoroughness would be an obvious part of covering any hot-button issue. And it is…when authors don’t assume they entirety of the audience they’re writing for thinks exactly like them.

“People talk down to you, [say] that you’re not going to amount to anything. And that’s just enough to push you over the edge,” she says. “You need one person that tells you that you can still do whatever it is that you want to do. And I wanted be that one person for somebody.”

How lovely. Robinson wanted to give people hope that they’ll amount to something…so she went into a business that denies millions of children that very possibility before they even make it out of the womb.

When I ask her if her pro-choice work affects the way she’s treated at the local hospitals, she says of one of them, “I’ll put it like this: Every time I walk up to the front desk and say good morning. Some days no one even looks up.”

Personally, if I were in the documentary business, this would be exactly the sort of admission that would tell me I had just stumbled on to a story. Stigma from the general population is easy enough to explain away, but why would fellow health providers look down on her if abortion was really just another form of health care, just as noble, beneficial, and life-affirming as anything else done in the hospital? Shouldn’t hospital staff know better?

Then again, it wouldn’t be productive for a good little pro-abortion soldier to tug at that particular cord, and risk finding out that Robinson gets such a chilly reception because the people at the front desk know better.

In 2010, she replied to a solicitation to purchase Mirena IUD’s from a New York supplier. Unbeknownst to her, the supplier had not complied with FDA regulations, causing the Department of Justice to open an inquiry. That’s when prosecutors stepped in, charging Dr. Robinson with Medicaid fraud, a violation of federal criminal law. Of the thousand-plus doctors and clinics that purchased goods from same supplier, Dr. Robinson says she was the only physician indicted. (The government has strongly denied selective prosecution.) She fought back. Eventually the charges were dropped, but the day she was arrested, put in shackles, and held in a jail cell for several hours, she keenly felt the risks of her profession.

Sure, charges against an abortionist from Barack Obama’s administration were motivated by anti-abortion bias. (And a documentary filmmaker interviewing her doesn’t find the suggestion just a smidgen implausible.)

Robinson may or may not have been innocent of this particular charge (even if the irony of arguing that a grand jury got it wrong will be lost on the same people who took a grand jury’s word on Planned Parenthood and David Daleiden as gospel), but it’s worth noting that she reacted to it by, as Life Legal Defense Foundation recalls, trying to evade detection by closing one facility and moving to another one, where she allegedly performed abortions before abortions were cleared to be performed there.

These are also far from the only legal problems associated with Alabama Women’s Center, which have included botched abortions, unsanitary conditions, abortionists accused of malpractice and criminal conduct, improper documentation, and more. But hey, why would Glamour’s readers want to know anything about that, when it’s more convenient to pretend abortionists are routinely persecuted for no reason?

She tells me about a woman she first saw for an abortion who, two years later, came back to see if she’d deliver her baby. “She knew I was there for her when she needed an abortion,” says Dr. Robinson, “and she knew I’d be there for her when she was ready and able to have her daughter. This is why I do this, to be there for each patient, whatever her decision.”

As offensive as it is to pro-life ears to frame abortion entirely around the mother’s “need” while completely disregarding the child’s, what’s almost more striking is how hard it is to imagine an undecided reader coming away from this pro-abortion piece more sympathetic to abortion. Aside from this brief bragging about Robinson’s “compassion” for women, absolutely nothing in this piece suggests why anyone’s reservations about abortion would be unfounded.

Even abortion advocates hoping to change minds should be upset that Porter does nothing toward that end. But they aren’t, because by and large the abortion lobby has traded in dialogue outside their echo chamber in favor of telling each other what they want to hear.

What you’re about to read is a shining example of when abortion coverage dives so far in the tank for its subject that it surpasses advocacy and reaches borderline idolatry.

[T]he State of Alabama has continued its assault on her work like hers: In May, the governor signed into law a provision banning abortion clinics from operating within 2,000 feet of a public school. It just so happens the Alabama Women’s Center is across the street from a magnet school.

Note the complete lack of discussion as to why this “assault on her work” is improper. It’s common to omit the pro-life side of the story, but to not even feel the need to explain your own? You might think thoroughness would be an obvious part of covering any hot-button issue. And it is…when authors don’t assume they entirety of the audience they’re writing for thinks exactly like them.

“People talk down to you, [say] that you’re not going to amount to anything. And that’s just enough to push you over the edge,” she says. “You need one person that tells you that you can still do whatever it is that you want to do. And I wanted be that one person for somebody.”

How lovely. Robinson wanted to give people hope that they’ll amount to something…so she went into a business that denies millions of children that very possibility before they even make it out of the womb.

When I ask her if her pro-choice work affects the way she’s treated at the local hospitals, she says of one of them, “I’ll put it like this: Every time I walk up to the front desk and say good morning. Some days no one even looks up.”

Personally, if I were in the documentary business, this would be exactly the sort of admission that would tell me I had just stumbled on to a story. Stigma from the general population is easy enough to explain away, but why would fellow health providers look down on her if abortion was really just another form of health care, just as noble, beneficial, and life-affirming as anything else done in the hospital? Shouldn’t hospital staff know better?

Then again, it wouldn’t be productive for a good little pro-abortion soldier to tug at that particular cord, and risk finding out that Robinson gets such a chilly reception because the people at the front desk know better.

In 2010, she replied to a solicitation to purchase Mirena IUD’s from a New York supplier. Unbeknownst to her, the supplier had not complied with FDA regulations, causing the Department of Justice to open an inquiry. That’s when prosecutors stepped in, charging Dr. Robinson with Medicaid fraud, a violation of federal criminal law. Of the thousand-plus doctors and clinics that purchased goods from same supplier, Dr. Robinson says she was the only physician indicted. (The government has strongly denied selective prosecution.) She fought back. Eventually the charges were dropped, but the day she was arrested, put in shackles, and held in a jail cell for several hours, she keenly felt the risks of her profession.

Sure, charges against an abortionist from Barack Obama’s administration were motivated by anti-abortion bias. (And a documentary filmmaker interviewing her doesn’t find the suggestion just a smidgen implausible.)

Robinson may or may not have been innocent of this particular charge (even if the irony of arguing that a grand jury got it wrong will be lost on the same people who took a grand jury’s word on Planned Parenthood and David Daleiden as gospel), but it’s worth noting that she reacted to it by, as Life Legal Defense Foundation recalls, trying to evade detection by closing one facility and moving to another one, where she allegedly performed abortions before abortions were cleared to be performed there.

These are also far from the only legal problems associated with Alabama Women’s Center, which have included botched abortions, unsanitary conditions, abortionists accused of malpractice and criminal conduct, improper documentation, and more. But hey, why would Glamour’s readers want to know anything about that, when it’s more convenient to pretend abortionists are routinely persecuted for no reason?

She tells me about a woman she first saw for an abortion who, two years later, came back to see if she’d deliver her baby. “She knew I was there for her when she needed an abortion,” says Dr. Robinson, “and she knew I’d be there for her when she was ready and able to have her daughter. This is why I do this, to be there for each patient, whatever her decision.”

As offensive as it is to pro-life ears to frame abortion entirely around the mother’s “need” while completely disregarding the child’s, what’s almost more striking is how hard it is to imagine an undecided reader coming away from this pro-abortion piece more sympathetic to abortion. Aside from this brief bragging about Robinson’s “compassion” for women, absolutely nothing in this piece suggests why anyone’s reservations about abortion would be unfounded.

Even abortion advocates hoping to change minds should be upset that Porter does nothing toward that end. But they aren’t, because by and large the abortion lobby has traded in dialogue outside their echo chamber in favor of telling each other what they want to hear.

Calvin Freiburger

Calvin Freiburger