Abortion

The revelation HBO’s Game of Thrones had a scene with George W. Bush’s severed head on a spike, for which HBO has apologized and maintained was “not a political statement,” reminded me of how five years ago CBS’s Showtime cable network very deliberately portrayed  George W. Bush being aborted.

The L Word drama about lesbian friends in Los Angeles, back on Sunday, January 28, 2007, featured the “Unauthorized Abortion of W,” a sculpture of Barbara Bush’s body with an exposed womb displaying George W. Bush’s adult face with each of his hands holding onto a rocket labeled “U.S. Air Force” (angled to suggest they represent forceps) while a vacuum cleaner hose was stuck in Mrs. Bush’s crotch. 

CNN is friendly to Christianity -- as long as the priests, ministers and religious play into the network's liberal agenda. If Christian guests stand up for traditional marriage, however, they can expect a much colder welcome if they even make it on air.

So it was no surprise that CNN has been promoting a dissenting nun's struggle with the Vatican, and making clear that it is siding with wayward American nuns after the Catholic Church has announced a reform of the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR). Anchor Christine Romans tossed softball after softball to liberal Sister Maureen Fiedler on Tuesday's Starting Point, and mocked the Vatican's criticism of the LCWR.

"Let me ask you, women can't be priests. Women – if you follow church teaching, can't use contraception," Romans stated before noting the irony of the prominence of statues of Mary in Catholic churches.  "[W]omen in the church when you look at some of the teachings, is there a war on woman within your church?" she asked Fiedler. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Friday's NBC Today, chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman explained to viewers that it's just good science to abort an unborn child that may have a genetic disorder, explaining that testing for such conditions, "gives parents a chance to decide whether they're going to continue that pregnancy or not. This is the science of today." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Snyderman then predicted: "I think the future will be such that you'll find out that your child may have a genetic hit. You can fix that genetic problem, and improve your chance, a child's chance..." When co-host Savannah Guthrie raised ethical questions about aborting children under such circumstances, Snyderman matter-of-factly replied: "Well, I'm pro-science, so I believe that this is a great way to prevent diseases."

A massive, notoriously scandal-ridden abortion provider is operating in Los Angeles high schools? What could go wrong?

Anna Gorman, writing for the Los Angeles Times on June 5, gave a glowing report of a highly controversial move:  the nation’s largest abortion provider has been put in charge of a public high school’s health care.

The three broadcast networks continue to act as guardian angels to Planned Parenthood, shielding the abortion provider from any hint of controversy. Live Action videos showing Planned Parenthood’s apparent willingness to cooperate in sex selection abortion have been completely buried by ABC, CBS, and NBC for an entire week (morning shows of May 30-June 5, evening shows of May 29-June 4).

Live Action has come out with two videos showing Planned Parenthood staffers actively assisting a Live Action actor to procure a sex-selection abortion. In the week after the story broke, the networks gave zero coverage to the Live Action reports. (Cable outlets CNN and Fox News have both given the Live Action videos coverage.) The videos coincided with a House vote to ban sex-selection abortion, which the networks also completely ignored.

Yesterday at 2:14 p.m. EDT, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on the Prenatal Non-discrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2012, which would impose "criminal penalties on anyone who knowingly or knowingly attempts to... perform an abortion knowing that the abortion is sought based on the sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent," according to congressional watchdog site GovTrack.us. The bill well-surpassed a simple majority (246-168 with 17 abstentions) but failed to pass on to the Senate as it was brought up for passage under a suspension of the rules, which requires a 2/3rds vote (at least 290 votes).

Yet news of the vote was not delivered on either the May 31 broadcast network newscasts -- ABC's World News, CBS's Evening News and NBC's Nightly News -- nor on the June 1 morning news programs -- ABC's Good Morning America, CBS's This Morning and NBC's Today.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly cited the Culture and Media Institute’s research into the network coverage of the Live Action sex-selection videos on his May 31 show.

O’Reilly noted: “The Media Research Center looked at the news this week on the nightly newscasts and CNN. Zero reporting. Nothing. Silence. Blackout.” (O’Reilly was mistaken in that CMI’s analysis didn’t cover CNN – just ABC, CBS and NBC.)

Video after the jump.

CBS made little effort to hide that it was siding with liberal dissenters inside the Catholic Church on Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning. Scott Pelley hyped that there was a Vatican "crackdown on America's 57,000 nuns." Gayle King touted how "some Catholics compare it to the dark days of the Inquisition, a crackdown on a prominent organization of nuns accused of being radical feminists."

King and co-anchor Charlie Rose sympathized with the group of dissenting sisters during an interview of left-wing public radio host Sister Maureen Fiedler, and hinted that the Catholic hierarchy was "out of touch." Correspondent Wyatt Andrews also overwhelmingly slanted towards the disobedient religious and their supporters during his reports on the two programs, and played only one brief soundbite from a spokeswoman for the bishops.

When cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure prepared to withdraw less than a million dollars of funding per year from Planned Parenthood, the three broadcast networks went ballistic, devoting a host of stories to the “explosion of anger” against Komen. But when videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood’s complicity in sex-selection abortions were released by a pro-life group, the major networks completely and predictably buried the story. 

Pro-life group Live Action released a video on May 29 showing a Planned Parenthood staffer helping a Live Action actor obtain a sex-selection abortion. On the morning of May 31, they released a second video with similar content. But the networks buried the story: not a single second of coverage was devoted to the Live Action videos by ABC, CBS, and NBC, on both the evening shows of May 29 and 30, and the morning shows of May 30 and 31. 

Video after the jump.

There is nothing more predictable than networks burying negative news about Planned Parenthood.

Pro-life organization Live Action recently came out with a disturbing video showing a Planned Parenthood staffer in Texas assisting a Live Action actor to obtain a sex-selection abortion. That practice is where a fetus is aborted if the child is discovered to be of a certain gender (usually female). The broadcast outlets have completely ignored the controversy: ABC, CBS, and NBC have not devoted a single second of their May 29 evening broadcasts and May 30 morning broadcasts to coverage of the recent Live Action videos.

Appearing as a guest just past 9:30 a.m. on FNC's America's Newsroom on Monday, liberal FNC analyst Kirsten Powers, as already recounted by Mediaite, observed that "obviously, there's a bias behind" the broadcast networks giving so little attention to the lawsuit against the Obama administration that was recently filed by numerous Catholic institutions challenging the requirement that employers provide free contraception to employees.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight, actress and comedienne Ali Wentworth brought up "reproduction rights" and Planned Parenthood as issues she is concerned about when host Piers Morgan turned the discussion to politics and what American women will be looking for in the presidential election. Wentworth began her answer by flippantly referring to her anatomy:

The Big Three networks' evening newscasts have all but punted so far on the 12 lawsuits filed on Monday against the Obama administration, challenging the abortifacient/birth control mandate which is part of ObamaCare. However, CBS actually followed up on their exclusive interview of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the regulation on Tuesday's CBS This Morning.

Correspondent Norah O'Donnell confronted Press Secretary Jay Carney during the Tuesday White House press briefing over Dolan's sharp critique of the mandate on the morning newscast: "He [Dolan] said that it's a 'strait-jacketing' and 'handcuffing exemption.'...Is that what the President is doing...strait-jacketing and hand-cuffing religious institutions?" O'Donnell's question didn't make it on the air on Tuesday's CBS Evening News or Wednesday's CBS This Morning, even after Carney evaded directly answering her question.

Nine prominent Catholic leaders have joined the Media Research Center to voice outrage over the broadcast networks deliberately withholding news of the momentous 43 Catholic entities suing the Obama administration for violating their religious freedoms. They represent major organizations including the Acton Institute, Cardinal Newman Society, SBA List and others. More are coming in every hour.

There are 60 million Catholics in the US.  The Catholic vote will be the most important swing vote this year.  So it’s not just a major policy issue, it is one with massive political implications.  Yet, 19 seconds of news coverage remains the only attention given by the evening broadcast networks. Two days after news broke, the tally is:

“[sigh] When will those mouth-breathing right-wingers give up their caves and clubs and learn to love science?” Pity the sophisticated liberal like CNN contributor Laura Sessions Stepp, whose impatience at Neanderthal misogynists and snake-handlers is palpable.

It’s also an act that helps them continue to push the falsehood that conservatives are anti-science and anti-contraception – and continue to play fast and loose with the facts in order to advance that narrative.

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time.

This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama.

ESPN's Grantland website jumped on the bash Manny Pacquiao bandwagon on Thursday by giving a platform to a homosexual activist, who predictably trashed the Catholic Church as she took the Filipino boxing sensation to task for defending traditional marriage.

Writer Laurel Fantauzzo ripped the "the Church's cruel, untrue dictates about me," and promised if he didn't "evolve" like President Obama, "I'll simply have to sigh wearily and turn away from you, the way I've turned away from all of the idiotic bigots I've come across in my life, carrying a cross or a heavy book or a Constitution."

Rachel Maddow is perturbed that Republican Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, said he will probably sign anti-abortion legislation he had not read.

Yes, you certainly have heard something along these lines before. Back in March 2010, two weeks before Obamacare became law, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unloaded a quote that will almost surely grace her obituary, saying of the 2,000-plus page proposed legislation, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." (video after page break)

In the domain of what properly constitutes human rights issues, forced abortions and sterilizations have to fall in that category. So why isn't the Washington Post describing Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng as a "human rights activist"?

In two stories packaged side-by-side on page A9 of the May 8 paper, the Post's Andrew Higgins and Keith B. Richburg failed to use the term to describe Chen. Higgins tagged Chen a "blind activist," as in an activist who is blind, not an activist for the blind, but the term could confuse casual readers unfamiliar with Chen's plight. Richburg opened his story by tagging Chen as "the self-taught lawyer who has become the center of a diplomatic crisis between the United States and China."

Fifty-six percent of Virginians approve of Republican Bob McDonnell's job as governor and 49 percent believe the Old Dominion is on the right track. That contrasts with a 47 percent average approval rating for President Obama and an average of 32.7 percent of Americans who believe the country is on the "right track."

Yet the Washington Post chose to spin the polling numbers as a negative, noticing a downward trend from previous numbers and attributing the shift to "a contentious legislative session that drew large protests and national ridicule to the state Capitol."

TV star Cybill Shepherd went on a radical feminist bender on Friday's CBS This Morning, touting that there really is a "war on women" manifested by the "attack on Planned Parenthood." Anchor Gayle King had to cut her off, as Shepherd inserted her diatribe at the end of the segment, but revealed her sympathies with her guest: "I think you're raising a good point. We just need more time to do it."

The far left actress made her devotion to the pro-abortion cause clear, and hinted that pro-lifers were so extreme that they would try to kill her: "Abortion is our constitutional right. We should keep it legal. And also, birth control should be available to everyone....I'm coming to lead the next march on Washington, and I'm not going to wear a bulletproof vest. My mother's scared for me." [audio available here; video below the jump]

On today's CNN Newsroom, anchor Kyra Phillips interviewed Rep. Allen West (R-FL) about several topics.  One was gay marriage (video here).  West said that it's a states' issue and he didn't want to be taken "down a rabbit hole to discuss things that really aren't that important.  This disturbed Phillips: