The “Democracy Dies in Darkness” newspaper is out this week with a shameless defense of abortion zealotry.

All but three Senate Democrats voted this week to reject Sen. Ben Sasse’s, R-Neb., Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have required health care providers to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of” children who survive attempted abortions. In other words, the bill would have provided abortion survivors with the same level of medical care afforded to all newborn infants.

On Tuesday, just one day after the Born-Alive Act died in the Senate, the Washington Post published the following headline: “Trump and Republicans are trying to paint Democrats as radical on abortion.”

This is as absurd as if a newspaper were to publish a headline that reads, “Democrats are trying to paint Steve King as a racist.” There would be no "painting" going on in that story. It would simply be people accurately describing other people.

If you can believe it, the headline is the least of the Post article's problems. Here’s how the report opens [emphasis added]:



Republicans have long used their party’s opposition to abortion as a rallying cry and a way to turn out voters. Now, they seem to be gearing up to make abortion a core issue in the 2020 race.



A key component of that strategy: painting Democrats as radical baby-killers.



This week, Senate Republicans advocated a bill that seemed designed to do just that.



Sasse first introduced the Born-Alive Act in 2017. He re-upped his legislation in January before the Democratic Party’s recent nationwide push for extreme pro-abortion legislation. It was after Sasse had re-introduced his 2017 bill that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Empire State’s new, ultra-permissive abortion law. A Democratic Virginia state lawmaker also unveiled a similarly ultra-permissive abortion law in the Virginia House of Delegates, to an unexpected backlash, after Sasse had already brought the Born-Alive Act back to the U.S. Senate.

The Post reporter writes that Democrats "argued that [Sasse’s] measure was an ‘unjustified attack’ on abortion rights, an overbroad effort to curtail doctors’ rights.”

But, the author makes no effort to explore whether there’s any credence to these allegations. Had he done the bare minimum required of his job, he would’ve found their talking points to be inaccurate (if not outright dishonest), given that the provisions included in Sasse’s bill do not in any way limit a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy via abortion. Just read the damned thing.

The Post article also claims Republican criticism of the pro-abortion bills offered in New York and Virginia is part of a wider campaign to characterize Democrats as extremists.

But again, what if the bills were just that radical?

The article actually goes out of his way to defend the measure passed in New York, which Republicans have accurately characterized as insane: “In reality,” the Post article reads, “the measure allows abortions within 24 weeks of the start of a pregnancy ‘or at any time when necessary to protect a woman’s life or health.'" The key phrase here is "any time necessary," because "health" can be invoked for any reason at all. The bill also removed all mentions of “abortion” from Article 125 of the Penal Law, which is why a New York man accused of stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death, killing both her and her unborn child, will face one less charge.

The real big question here is this: Why do Democrats' clearly radical bills get such an extensive rhetorical defense in a "news" article, whereas the purpose of Sasse's much simpler bill is turned into the subject of a two-sided debate?

The Post article concludes by recalling that Trump had mentioned Democratic lawmakers’ support for late-term abortion in his State of the Union address.

“Trump’s speech did not acknowledge that ‘late-term abortions’ are very rare,” the author notes. “Instead, he looked to capitalize on their unpopularity. That will probably work in the president’s favor in 2020, especially with white evangelicals who see abortion as a core issue.

I wrote earlier this week that the Senate Democrats who voted against the Born-Alive Act won’t have to worry about any major negative news coverage. This Post report is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.