Earlier this month, the editors of the New York Times made no effort to hide their pro-abortion bias with their piece, “The Reproductive Rights Rollback of 2015.”
The pro-life movement of 2015 has much to celebrate: the closure of abortion facilities and the pro-life laws that have been passed. But the New York Times, right from the start, lets us know what their angle is:
How many laws making it harder to get an abortion will pass before the Supreme Court sees them for what they are — part of a tireless, coordinated nationwide assault on the right of women to control what happens with their own bodies without the interference of politicians?
When it comes to these laws, the editors think that they have found an “aha” moment. They point out:
Most of the time, lawmakers are clever enough to disguise their true intent by claiming that their interest is in protecting women’s physical or mental health.
But then the very next sentence reads:
But now and then the facade falls away, as when the Mississippi governor, Phil Bryant, called a set of restrictions he signed into law in 2012 “the first step in a movement” that aims to “end abortion in Mississippi.”
Sorry, NYT, the two ideas need not be mutually exclusive.
Lawmakers in the United States are forced to work within a very tight framework from Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Certain laws are proposed and passed where they can be, which involve making the procedure at least safer for the woman if it is going to be legal. When the abortion industry can’t hold up to the legal scrutiny, that says something about the abortion industry rather than the laws.
If the abortion industry cannot hold up to such basic safety standards, these laws may very well be the start to ending abortion.
Taking a play from the abortion industry, the editors refer to these laws as “TRAP laws.”
The NYT editors also discuss the pro-life laws passed in Texas, which the U.S. Supreme Court will soon examine, as well as a highly problematic study on self-abortions (read the long list of problems with the study here):
Among other burdens, this increases the chance that a woman will try to end her pregnancy on her own. This is extremely risky, and in some states it is even grounds for a charge of attempted murder. One study, based on a recent survey, estimated that 100,000 to 240,000 Texas women ages 18 to 49 have attempted a self-induced abortion without medical assistance. These women, the study found, were significantly more likely than average to have less access to basic reproductive-health services like birth control.
The editors also point to one Pew Research poll that claims defunding Planned Parenthood is “politically unpopular.” No mention is made of the U.S. Senate voting to defund Planned Parenthood, or of the countless votes from the U.S. House of Representatives to do so.
But the real narrow-mindedness of the NYT editors comes in the form of what might as well be a script from Planned Parenthood:
… The organization, which is the only reproductive-health service provider for millions of poorer women, is already prohibited by law from using federal funds for almost all abortions.
That doesn’t matter to anti-choice activists in places like Wisconsin and Indiana, where efforts by conservative lawmakers and governors have forced even those Planned Parenthood clinics that don’t perform any abortions to shut down. A result is that many lower-income women lose access to basic health care as well as contraceptive services that would make them less likely to have unintended pregnancies.
What these editors don’t seem to want to understand is that there are many reasons to defund Planned Parenthood, regardless of the claim that taxpayer dollars cannot go directly towards abortion. Many Americans simply do not want their hard-earned dollars going towards an organization affiliated with abortion in any way. Many Americans also feel that such an organization should have to operate standing on its own two feet.
The NYT editors close with this:
By any reasonable measure, Texas’ law places an undue burden on women seeking abortion services and should be struck down. Beyond doing that, the justices must send a clear and broad message affirming the constitutionally protected right of women to determine the course of their reproductive lives. Political opponents have shown how quickly they can regroup and find ways to restrict or obliterate programs and services women need.
Such a view is hardly “any reasonable measure.” It’s a biased, narrow-minded and abortion-obsessed view, which completely disregards the actual lives (“reproductive lives” included) of the human beings killed by abortion.
On the bright side: when the editors of the New York Times are complaining, pro-lifers may have something to take delight in.
