Americans still Pro-life; Why?

NY Times’ Douthat: Americans Still Pro-life

A majority of Americans remain opposed to almost all abortions despite the mainstream media’s insistence on a pro-choice bias.

That’s the thrust of an opinion piece by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat written amid the controversy over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision — later rescinded — to defund Planned Parenthood.

In a column headlined “The Media’s Abortion Blinders,” Douthat points out that in a recent poll, 58 percent of Americans stated that abortion should either be “illegal in all circumstances” or “legal in only a few circumstances.”

He also states that the first Gallup poll to show a pro-life majority was conducted back in May 2009.

“But if you followed the media frenzy” surrounding the Komen foundation’s move, “you would think all these millions of anti-abortion Americans simply do not exist,” Douthat writes.

“Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable.

“Millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women — do oppose Planned Parenthood. They oppose the 300,000-plus abortions it performs every year, and they oppose its tireless opposition to even modest limits on abortion.”   Yet the mass media and liberal left worry more about the mostly inter- city gang – drug related Gun deaths; than the Abortions…

**  Note:  { the CDC child gun death figures are typically half of the figures that the gun control lobby publishes. The difference is in the definition of a child. The gun control lobby counts young adults that are 18 or 19 years old as children, but they do not count 20 year olds as children. You can choose from one of two possible reasons, depending on your level of cynicism: 1. The standard CDC age groups used to go from 0-19, 20-39, etc and the gun control lobby couldn’t figure out how to select a custom age group. 2. Counting 18 and 19 year olds as children doubles the number of so-called child gun deaths, and more child gun deaths means more support for gun control.

In 2007 there were 1520 gun deaths in the 0 through 17 age group (out of 74,340,127 children) and 3067 gun deaths in the 0 through 19 age group. By subtraction we find that there were a whopping 1547 gun deaths in just the 18 through 19 age group. In other words, in 2007 most “child gun death victims” were actually adults. Historically the 18 through 24 age group is the highest crime-committing group. At age 18 part-time drug dealers leave school and become full-time drug dealers. Despite the propaganda from the gun control lobby, criminals in general and drug dealers in particular are the group of so-called children most likely to be shot by their fellow criminals. You can verify this by reading the local gun death news stories in any city newspaper. School shootings are so rare that every one gets national television coverage, but drug dealers are shot so often that they are barely mentioned in their local newspaper. }  So who is the problem?

Douthat notes that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $250,000 to Planned Parenthood following the Komen foundation’s decision to defund — which it has now rescinded.

“That’s obviously his right,” Douthat observes.         “But reporters have different obligations. Even if some forms of partiality are inevitable, journalists betray their calling when they simply ignore self-evident truths about a story.”