Why can’t the media get it straight when it comes to the question of when human life begins?

I don’t believe that reporters and editors at the largest media outlets botch their facts out of deliberate dishonesty. The two most likely explanations are: (A) They just don’t care to try and overcome their bias, or (B) they do try, but their bias and the bubble they live in are so strong that they fail.

Check out the coverage of Tuesday’s debate over two pro-life bills that the Democrats successfully filibustered.

Keep in mind that one of these pro-life bills was not an actual abortion restriction. The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act merely requires doctors and hospitals to treat babies who survive abortions and are born alive as patients. CNN claims that the Senate was debating “two abortion restriction bills.” But it is not an “abortion restriction” to say that a child who is already born must be cared for.

Do CNN editors not know what the bill would do, or do they believe that letting a living, already born baby die counts as an abortion?

If that latter possibility sounds insane, consider how CNN describes such a baby. CNN says the bill “would require abortion providers to work to 'preserve the life and health' of a fetus that was born following an attempted abortion as they would for a newborn baby, or face up to five years in prison.”*

“A fetus that was born,” as Alexandra DeSanctis points out, is also known as “a baby.”

Every single person you know is a “fetus that was born.” Caroline Kelly, the CNN reporter who wrote this piece, is a “fetus that was born," just as every senator who refused to allow a vote on this measure is a fetus that was born.

What the bill would do is require a doctor to treat a person born after an attempted abortion the same as it would treat a person born not after an attempted abortion.

The New York Times says the bill would “threaten some doctors who perform [abortions] with criminal penalties.” That’s literally true but entirely misleading. The only abortionists to face criminal penalties would be those who fail to terminate a baby in utero and then also refuse to provide or order care for the living baby born as a result.

The New York Times's “threaten … with criminal penalties” language is as sensible as saying malpractice laws “threaten some doctors who care for women with legal penalties.”

In another bit of misleading sleight of hand, the New York Times says “late-term abortions” are “exceedingly rare” because “abortions after 20 weeks accounted for 1.2% of abortions in 2016.”

Considering that 623,471 abortions were reported, 1.2% is more than 7,400 late-term abortions. Is that exceedingly rare? That’s 140 every week. There are twice as many late-term abortions in the United States as there are children or teens killed or injured by firearms in the U.S. The New York Times does not call it “exceedingly rare” for children or teens to be shot in the U.S.

If you administered truth serum, probably 90% of the accredited press in the U.S. would say they want abortion legal in most or all cases. If you looked through the sources and contacts and wedding guests of most reporters and editors at major publications, you would find tons of Planned Parenthood, SKD Knickerbocker, and EMILY's List names among them. The average reporter lives in the same ecosystem as the average abortion lobbyist and Planned Parenthood flack.

The result is very slanted coverage of abortion that misleads readers about the facts but informs the knowledgeable readers about media bias.

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*Update, on Thursday CNN got rid of the phrase "a fetus that was born" to describe people.