Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) has republished its style guide in the wake of recent abortion legislation, urging its staff to stick to language that does not accidentally humanize the unborn child.

According to the guide, doctors are mistaken when they offer to show a pregnant woman a sonogram of her “baby,” since “a baby is not a baby until it is born.”

NPR employees may not refer to “fetal heartbeat” legislation, the guide declares, because at six weeks, when a heartbeat can first be detected, the mother is carrying an “embryo” and not a “fetus.”

The NPR abortion-language guide also forbids use of the term “partial-birth abortion,” since that is the term used by “opponents.” They should instead use the more obscure term “intact dilation and extraction” to describe the procedure.

Other banned terminology includes the expressions “abortion clinics,” “abortion doctors,” and “unborn babies,” the guide notes, since they could possibly have a negative connotation.

“The term ‘unborn’ implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born,” it declares.

Far from guaranteeing fair or “neutral” language, the NPR guide plants itself firmly on the side of the abortion lobby.

NPR’s guide to speaking about abortion coincides perfectly with the guide produced by abortion giant Planned Parenthood, which aims to manipulate public opinion about abortion by controlling the language used to describe it.

In its guide, Planned Parenthood similarly prohibits the use of the expression “partial-birth abortion,” as well as “personhood,” “taxpayer funding of abortion,” “chemical abortion,” and “crisis pregnancy centers” (which Planned Parenthood calls “fake clinics”).

Despite the fact that NPR is partially funded by taxpayer dollars, its language advocates for a radical pro-abortion agenda and directly against the position of the three-quarters of Americans who favor banning abortions after 20 weeks.

NPR receives taxpayer funding in the form of grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CBC), which are “essential” to its existence, according to the NPR website.

Some 12 percent of NPR’s public radio station revenues are from U.S. taxes, and in 2017 it received nearly $2 million from CPB as well as other federal grants.

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