At The Corner at National Review, Wesley J. Smith nailed The New York Times for an obvious double standard when it comes to hidden-camera videos – yes for animal rights activists, no for the anti-abortion folks.
On Saturday, a Times staff editorial lamented “the so-called ag-gag law, which makes it a crime to secretly videotape industrial feedlots and slaughterhouses for the purpose of exposing animal mistreatment and abuse. These laws, on the books in seven states, purport to be about the protection of private property, but they are nothing more than government-sanctioned censorship of a matter of public interest.” How is abortion not "a matter of public interest"?
They added "The law’s sponsor complained that the videos exposed the industry to 'the court of public opinion,' as though that were a bad thing in a free-market society."
After the obligatory citations of leftist muckraker Upton Sinclair, the Times concluded:
In a country that lavishes love and legal protections on house pets, factory farmed animals are left out in the cold, exempt from almost all animal cruelty laws. As a result they suffer torture and other mistreatment to a degree that is hard to imagine. The only way to make it stop is to ensure that Americans can see for themselves what goes on behind the factory doors.
But on July 22, the same Times editorial staff railed against a “campaign of deception against Planned Parenthood.” This kind of secret taping is implicitly dishonest, based on the wicked agenda of the activists. It’s just
the latest in a series of unrelenting attacks on Planned Parenthood, which offers health care services to millions of people every year. The politicians howling to defund Planned Parenthood care nothing about the truth here, being perfectly willing to undermine women’s reproductive rights any way they can....
The Center for Medical Progress video campaign is a dishonest attempt to make legal, voluntary and potentially lifesaving tissue donations appear nefarious and illegal. Lawmakers responding by promoting their own anti-choice agenda are rewarding deception and putting women’s health and their constitutionally protected rights at risk.
Perhaps we can call what happens inside animal slaughterhouses "health care services," since that's the euphemism for human slaughterhouses.
