A timely and powerful ad, rejected by three major American newspapers, due to alleged concerns over "controversy" (via Live Action):
A national pro-life organization is outraged after three major American newspapers rejected a pro-life ad as “too controversial.” The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the LA Times refused to run an advertisement created by Heroic Media. Heroic Media Executive Director Joe Young said he was shocked and angered that the media outlets were willing to talk about the issue but were unwilling to show the reality of life at 20 weeks. “I am disturbed that these papers would run article after article promoting the notion that abortion is a victimless act without consequences,” Young said. “The fact remains, children who are unique individuals – never again to be duplicated – are being killed in the most violent way imaginable and they feel the excruciating pain of that death.” The newspapers took issue with the image of the baby. “It seems as though it is okay to talk about the issue in general, but when you actually put a face to the discussion, then it becomes controversial,” Young said.
In defense of these news outlets, they can surely afford to take the financial hit by not printing the item above, alienating pro-lifers in the process. It's not like newspaper ad revenue has cratered, leading to mass layoffs across the industry in recent years, or anything. Abortion-related controversies often set the conditions for test-tube-pure manifestations of media bias. In this particular case, major papers are actively choosing to hasten their own financial demise rather than accept an affecting advertisement on a relevant issue. One of those newspapers -- USA Today -- editorialized against restricting late-term abortions over the holiday weekend, wringing their hands over the concern that women may not have enough time to abort children with abnormalities like Down Syndrome. Cassie Fiano responds:
Finding out your child has a fetal abnormality is heartbreaking. Many times, the problem can be repaired after birth – if it even exists. Ultrasounds aren’t foolproof, after all. This is the most popular excuse pro-aborts trot out for late-term abortion, even though the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has found that only around 2% of women have late-term abortions because some sort of fetal abnormality was found. It is overwhelmingly for reasons of convenience – but that just wouldn’t sell as well, would it?
Would USA Today's editors execute an about-face if an exception were written into the legislation to cover these extremely rare cases? Or would they simply find another way to defend the high sacrament of abortion? As for the ad itself, I generally consider the tactic of parading grisly images of aborted fetuses before the public to be counter-productive. Not in all circumstances, necessarily, but in most. People shut down. In this case, the photograph isn't bloody or gruesome; it's searing. That is clearly a child, yet in many states, it's still legal to have that child killed -- often for reasons of convenience. Even much of Europe has outlawed such barbarity. As the United States attempts to catch up with nations like France on this human rights issue, influential and deep-pocketed special interest groups are pulling out all the stops to obstruct common-sense, science-backed restrictions on this ghoulish practice. The American people overwhelmingly oppose almost all abortions in the fourth month (12 weeks) of pregnancy and beyond. The House-passed bill doesn't even go that far, kicking in at roughly the sixth month (20 weeks). Extremists on this issue are over-represented in the US Senate and the White House, almost certainly dooming this bill's path to passage. These obstacles are unlikely to stop Sen. Marco Rubio from introducing his version of the House-passed bill in the upper chamber. We'll see if the formerly and nominally "pro-life" Senate Majority Leader will even allow a vote on it. Don't hold your breath. Abortion advocates often bend over backwards to obfuscate and avoid addressing the core issue head-on. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently conducted an abortion-avoidance clinic on Meet the Press:
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“I think we’re at a place where a woman’s health is in danger, because of, whether it is family planning, or contraception, or any issues that relate to women’s health, there is an assault on that in the Congress, on the ongoing, and in other parts of the country,” she said. ”So we have to be ever vigilant, and fight for this. This is, again, this is about respect for women, the judgements that women make, and their doctors, about their reproductive health. It’s an important part of who women are.”
Every euphemism in the book, plus contraception. Never mentioned: Late-term abortion, which was the subject of the interview. They really don't want to talk about it:
Next question.
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