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The Thriving Media Subterfuge

By Judie Brown

Subterfuge: the use of tricks especially to hide, avoid, or get something

One of the time-honored traditions of the culture of death is the spewing forth of disingenuous propaganda. We recognize this characteristic not only from the pro-death organizations themselves, but from the media—the organizations’ natural allies in the struggle to protect the right to kill innocent people, both born and preborn. Examples of this are numerous, but in recent days there have been more than a few that illustrate this point.

Let’s start with the New York Times story entitled “The Real Science of Abortion Drugs,” an editorial board opinion piece on state laws limiting medical abortions that use drugs like mifepristone (RU-486) and methotrexate. The piece claims that such laws create health problems for women. Furthermore, it claims that abortion restriction laws requiring physicians instead of other medical personnel to write prescriptions impairs the efficiency of providing such killer drugs. The article concludes with these reckless words: “None of these laws are based in science. The best way to protect women’s health would be to repeal them.”

In other words, the New York Times is marketing the idea that dangerous abortion-causing drugs that harm women and kill their babies before they are born should be provided in an unrestricted environment. It’s sort of like having abortion-drug cartels that sell these pills on the street corner!

How in the world is that responsible journalism from the so-called “newspaper of record”?

Meanwhile, in California, the state’s lawmakers “approved a Planned Parenthood-sponsored bill that criminalizes the distribution of secretly recorded conversations with any health care provider.” The bill is aimed at the Center for Medical Progress and the investigative video reports produced by David Daleiden and his coworkers. The Washington Post was quick to debunk the credibility of the videos, quoting Beth Parker, chief legal counsel for Planned Parenthood affiliates in California, who described the videos as a “smear campaign.” In addition, the Los Angeles Times reported that Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, author of the bill, made a point of saying that steps were taken in the legislation to “make sure the press could still do their jobs.”

These reports tell us two things about the way reporters view facts. The first is that the video reports, in an opinion shared by Planned Parenthood, were nothing more than an effort to besmirch the bloody business practices of Planned Parenthood. The second is that reporters deemed “the press” as a protected class of people and the CMP team is not part of that group.

If that isn’t media bias, I am hard-pressed to tell you what it is. As most honest people already know, the investigative work of the Daleiden forces has raised professionalism in undercover reporting to a new level. Of course CMP is telling the truth, and there’s the rub for mainstream media who are committed to protecting Planned Parenthood at all costs.

Finally, it would be an oversight if we failed to mention the hype that the media is giving to the pro-euthanasia proposal being considered in Colorado this November. The Colorado Independent recently published a story saying that without “medical aid-in-dying”—a synonym for euthanasia—patients will “choose to die violently.” To make the argument, the news report cites the case of Sheryl Randall, who was battling multiple sclerosis and chose to commit suicide by hanging herself.

The argument set forth by the newspaper story is, not surprisingly, that if assisted suicide had been available in Colorado, Randall would have chosen to die by this method instead. The story does not provide arguments against that premise. Neither does it discuss which treatments or alternatives might actually have helped Randall live with her MS.

The Denver Post reports that the battle between those in favor and those opposed to euthanasia is actually a war of politically-motivated words designed to drive voters one way or the other. But nowhere do we find an honest discussion on the reason why any form of euthanasia by any name is immoral and unethical.

And there you have it. Parsing words is all that really matters.

That’s the way it is in the world of thriving media subterfuge.

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Combat the evil with truth! Join American Life League in defiance of the culture of our day—this culture of death. Through your actions and words, become a part of our movement to build a culture of life. Pray, be informed, and educate others.

For pro-life information, go to all.org.

For pro-life educational tools, visit cultureoflifestudies.com.

To see documented proof of Planned Parenthood’s debauchery and to learn ways to stop its spread, go to stopp.org.

To join with youth outreach for a pro-life generation, go to lifedefender.org.