Tipsheet

'Incredibly Screwed Up': CNN Misleads and Exploits Tragedy With Clickbait Abortion Article

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 15, 2023 6:00 PM

The Dobbs v. Jackson decision and its one year anniversary have hit the mainstream media hard, especially CNN. Not so surprisingly, they handled one tragic story in the worst way when it comes to the case of a Kentucky couple who aborted their daughter. "Kentucky couple ‘furious’ state abortion laws meant they couldn’t hold their daughter to say goodbye," a headline from last week read, conveniently leaving out that because of the abortion method the couple sought, there weren't actually any pieces for them to "hold." 

"All Heather and Nick Maberry wanted to do was hold their dead baby, but strict Kentucky abortion laws meant they couldn’t," the article began. "They were 'furious' that the laws meant they never got to kiss or cuddle their daughter, Willow Rose, or tell her goodbye, Heather said."

What context the article does give is brief:

The family’s ordeal started in April, when Heather was nearly five months pregnant and they found out their daughter was missing a major part of the brain, a condition called anencephaly. They say their doctors told them she would either be stillborn or die very quickly after birth.

The Maberrys wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but a near-complete abortion ban in their state doesn’t have exceptions for birth defects – even severe ones like anencephaly.

The Maberrys went out of state to end the pregnancy, but their insurance, Kentucky Medicaid, wouldn’t pay for it. They wanted to induce birth so they could hold Willow, but that would’ve cost them tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, they had to settle for a much less expensive surgical procedure – but that procedure does not leave the fetus intact.

...

A clinic in Chicago agreed to do a surgical procedure called a dilation and evacuation for free, and organizations that support abortion rights paid for their travel expenses, Heather said.

...

The Maberrys said the clinic wouldn’t give them Willow’s remains, which they wanted to cremate. Her medical records from there state that “major fetal parts and placental tissue were identified and the specimen was prepared for disposal.”

Notice how the article describes that the abortion that take place, which is a Dilation & Evacuation (D&E). Readers are only told that the "procedure does not leave the fetus intact." That's certainly true, but what's left out is what exactly happened to the baby, in this case named Willow Rose, during the abortion. 

After the protective amniotic fluid is emptied out, an abortionist grasps the baby's arms, legs, and other body parts to tear them off using a sopher clamp, described by Live Action as "a grasping instrument with rows of sharp 'teeth.'"

Recommended

ICE Sends Hochul Grim Warning After Arresting Wanted Illegal Immigrant Sarah Arnold
Wait Until You Hear What Planned Parenthood Was Just Caught Doing Sarah Arnold

"The most difficult part of the procedure is usually finding, grasping and crushing the baby’s head. After removing pieces of the child’s skull, the abortionist uses a curette to scrape the uterus and remove the placenta and any remaining parts of the baby," Live Action also explains. 

The abortionist then has to reassemble the baby's body parts to make sure everything is there. 

This isn't to say that the option that the Maberrys wanted was a walk in the park either. If they had gone with the induction method, it would have taken several days. Before labor would have been induced and their daughter, Willow Rose, would have been delivered as a stillborn, her mother would have had a needle of digoxin or potassium chloride injected into her, to stop the baby's heart via a fatal heart attack. 

As Live Action also explains, the mother would be given labor-inducing drugs to give birth to her stillborn daughter. In explaining the procedure, Live Action also noted that some women do not make it to the hospital. 

"If she goes into labor before she can make it to the abortion clinic in time, she will deliver her baby at home or in a hotel room," Live Action explains. "During this time, a woman may be advised to sit on a bathroom toilet until the abortionist arrives. If she can make it to the clinic, she will do so during her most heavy and severe contractions and deliver the dead baby."

The CNN article also tries to describe induction abortion as an act of mercy when explaining the condition that Willow Rose was diagnosed with in utero, anencephaly, where the baby is missing a major part of her brain:

The prognosis for a baby with anencephaly is dire. The National Institutes of Health says that “if the infant is not stillborn, it will usually die within a few hours or days after birth.”

A medical journal article about anencephaly says it is “incompatible with life but not with love.”

That’s how the Maberrys felt: They loved their daughter and did not want her to suffer. They wanted to terminate the pregnancy for Willow’s sake - and for Heather’s. Her hyperemesis wasn’t abating, and she wanted to return to work and to caring for her three children. There was another health concern: Heather had high blood pressure, and continuing the pregnancy could make it dangerously high. While she was willing to take that risk for a live baby, Willow was not going to live.

“I don’t feel like carrying her was an option. Period,” Heather said.

Townhall reached out to the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) for this article. Dr. Catherine Stark, an OBGYN, pointed to BeNotAfraid.net as a option that offers perinatal hospice support. She also shared the story of Baby Ember with Townhall, who was likewise diagnosed with anencephaly. Although doctors tried to push abortion as the only option, she was carried to term. While her mother was pregnant with her, Ember's family embarked on a tour to their favorite places they wanted to take her to. She lived for 1 hour and 6 minutes after birth. "All she knew was the unconditional love of her family," the YouTube video description reads in part. 

"In my experience, once parents receive a diagnosis like anencephaly, we need to walk with them and help them through the grief process," Dr. Stark told Townhall. "Suggesting that their best or only option is to undergo either a D&E or otherwise speeding the death of their child doesn’t spare them from the pain they are facing, but adds another element of trauma to what has already happened to them."

Such exploitation from CNN received considerable attention, as our friends at Twitchy highlighted at the time. Among those speaking out included The Babylon Bee's Joel Berry, The Daily Signal's Mary Margaret Olohan, and Live Action.

CNN also received hundreds of replies calling them out over the numerous times they tweeted out the article, with the tweet containing even more clickbait than the headline.

CNN has had similarly problematic responses to other abortion news lately as well. Late last month, a study in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) was released showing that over 10,000 lives were saved due to a pro-life Texas law that went into effect on September 1, 2021. That law bans most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. 

For lamenting this good news, CNN was similarly called out for going with such a despicable narrative.