That’s what the pro-abortion blog RH Reality Check would have us believe. In response to the media coverage of the two partial-birth abortion related cases that will be argued before the Supreme Court this Wednesday, their home page currently issues this call to action:
Ask Mainstream Media to Stop “Talking Right” on Women’s Healthcare Options!
It links to a petition that reads:
We, the Undersigned, endorse the following petition: The “pro-life” lobby has successfully manipulated Congress and the Courts. Now, legislation and court cases around the country are threatening to overturn the right to choose, a very private health decision for women. What’s more disturbing is the fact that the mainstream media, who supposedly provide us with “fair and balanced” perspectives, have actually adopted the very language that far right strategists invented for talking about women’s medical procedures. The term “partial-birth abortion” is “not medical terminology” according to the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and many other leading legal and medical associations. Yet, the media continues to use this phrase and others as legitimate medical terms, making right-wing rhetoric seem like factual language in the minds of voters. Next week, the United States Supreme Court will hear two important cases – both of which have been called out by all major American medical associations for using political rhetoric rather than medical language to describe abortion. Reproductive Health Reality Check is asking mainstream media to refrain from using extremist rhetoric in their reporting of these cases and others. Join them in calling on news executives to ensure that journalists stop “talking right” about a woman’s right to choose. [Emphasis in the original.]
[As an aside: Reading this reminded me of the time when a few friends and I attended an event sponsored by the Loyola Socialists. (Yes, there actually was, within the past decade, a Socialist chapter at my Catholic alma mater. Considering what happened there last month, you probably won’t find that hard to believe. For the record, however, as far as I know, the Socialist chapter there is now disbanded.) At this abortion-rights themed event, the general sentiment among the group was that the “right to choose” was about to be overturned any day now, and that then-President Clinton (this was in 1998, as I recall) wasn’t pro-choice at all. One fellow in attendance referred to Clinton as “anti-choice,” while several others nodded in agreement.] I don’t know what’s more strange: the laughable fact that pro-aborts are accusing the mainstream media of a pro-life bias (apparently it’s overlooked that when the term “partial-birth abortion” is used in the MSM, it never appears on its own; rather, it’s used in a context such as, “so-called partial-birth abortion”), or the fact that they can’t bear that the MSM does not use the technical name to describe the procedure: i. e., intact dilation & extraction. (Ironically, the words “intact dilation & extraction” appear nowhere in the petition.) For obvious reasons, ordinary people don’t usually use precise scientific terminology in everyday conversation. Hence, the common practice of describing something “in layman’s terms”. That’s why the term “partial-birth abortion” is such an apt description of intact dilation & extraction. The doctor who literally wrote the book on abortion, John Willke, describes intact dilation & extraction as follows:
This is like a breech delivery. The entire infant is delivered except the head. A scissors is jammed into the base of the skull. A tube is inserted into the skull, and the brain is sucked out. The now-dead infant is pulled out. The drawings illustrate this.
“Partial-birth abortion” = “right-wing rhetoric”? Decide for yourself.
