By Laura Echevarria, Director of Communications and Press Secretary
Editor’s note. This appeared in the April edition of National Right to Life News. Please share this story from the “pro-life newspaper of record” with your pro-life family and friends.
On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. At the heart of the discussion before the justices were (a) whether the Alliance had legal standing to file the lawsuit; and (b) the decisions in 2016 and 2021 made by the FDA that greatly weakened regulations of the abortion drug mifepristone.
Not that it was anything new, but the legacy media immediately promoted talking points that seemed to come directly from the PR departments of pro-abortion groups.
Language is important to how people perceive an issue and with some of the most widely-read news outlets using pro-abortion language, they do a disservice to readers
Ultimately, pro-abortion groups claim that any legislation or court rulings protecting preborn babies are “bans.” This is the tone many mainstream media organizations have taken in describing the case before the High Court including USA Today’s Maureen Groppe.
Groppe wrote in an article titled, “Abortion pill challenge gives Supreme Court chance to move toward national abortion ban,”
Two years after the Supreme Courterased the constitutional right to an abortion, creating a patchwork of access across the country, the justices could now pave the way toward a national ban. [underlining added]
Note the language in the first sentence. It’s not neutral language—it’s loaded with jargon from pro-abortion groups.
In a Washington Post analysis “Why the Supreme Court abortion pill case is so fraught for the right,” Aaron Blake wrote,
We don’t yet know what the Supreme Court will do. But over and over again, we’ve seen how putting these decisions in the hands of legislators or judges can have significant and troublesome consequences for the GOP. [underlining added]
The assumption, once again, is that protecting preborn babies is something only a minority of Americans want and that any laws or court decisions that provide protections are completed in an echo chamber with no support from the public. This wording undermines the ideas behind the Dobbs decision.
In The New York Times, Lisa Lerer wrote in “On the issue of abortion, Democrats see a political winner. Republicans see more of a puzzle,”
They [‘conservative politicians and judges in deep red states’] have moved to completely criminalize the procedure and restrict access to other aspects of women’s reproductive health, including fertility treatments.
Democrats hope that arguments at the Supreme Court over access to abortion pills will provide another moment for the party to highlight the most extreme elements of the anti-abortion movement. [underlining added]
Once again, protecting innocent human life is seen as extreme.
Mark Sherman of The Associated Press (AP) wrote,
The practical consequences of a ruling for abortion opponents would be dramatic, including possibly halting the delivery of mifepristone through the mail and at large pharmacy chains, andending increasingly popular telehealthvisits at which the drug can be prescribed. [underlining added]
Note how Sherman used words like “dramatic,” “halting” and “increasing popular” in its description of a ruling that restored safety protocols for mifepristone abortions.
Even using “a ruling for abortion opponents” sets up the statement to infer that abortion is the normal state of things and that being pro-life is “opposing” the norm.
Biased coverage of this issue has serious, life-changing repercussions not only for women’s health and safety but also for their preborn babies. It is our job to straighten out the crooked language of the legacy media.