Abortion and the Media

On March 11, 1997, US Senate and House Committees met jointly to hear testimony on "Partial-Birth Abortion: The Truth." The following testimony was presented by Helen Alvare, director of Planning and Information of the NCCB, specifying the lack of accuracy, if not purposeful lies, of the media regarding this abortion technique:

Another theme that featured prominently in our educational materials was the way that I proponents of partial-birth abortion were repeating false information -- and getting away with it in the press. A few examples will illustrate.

I was interviewed last June by Eric Zorn, a columnist from the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Zorn's "thesis," as he explained it to me, was this: if any partial birth abortions were being performed for truly "elective" reasons, for reasons the public would consider nonserious, as the pro-life movement was claiming, the movement should produce the mothers involved. I explained at some length that it wasn't "the movement" claiming that the majority of these procedures were "elective", this fact was asserted by the partial-birth abortion providers themselves. I sent Zorn Dr. Haskell's statements as quoted in the American Medical News. I also sent the charts Dr. McMahon had provided to the Subcommittee on the Constitution in which he had detailed the rationales for abortions he had performed. These documents showed the elective nature of the majority of these procedures -- and in the words of the abortionists themselves. I asked Zorn to reconsider his own logic: aren't patient records confidential and in the possession of the abortion providers themselves, I asked? And if you were a woman who had your healthy child aborted would you be eager to go public? Nothing, however, could shake Mr. Zorn's tenacious grip on his thesis. He ended up writing- "That explanation won't do. If these once callous, cruel, selfish women who drive this national debate truly exist, let's hear from ." (June 6, 1996). In a follow-up column, he wrote: "Well, there are late-term abortions, there are "partial-birth" abortions and there are abortions performed for non-medical or elective reasons. We find very little overlap ... because later-term abortions are very rare and almost always performed for serious medical reasons. . .." (June 13, 1996).

Since Mr. Zorn's column, regarding the reasons partial-birth abortions are performed, the Bergen Record quoted an abortionist whose clinic performs about 1500 of these per year stating-. "Most are for elective, not medical, reasons: people who didn't realize, or didn't care, how far along they were.