One of the more revealing side effects of the 2016 presidential campaign, and especially the November election, is how old-line liberal publications which once had at least a veneer of respectability have completely gone off the deep end.
Readers have come to expect completely unhinged, error-ridden material to routinely appear at places like Salon.com. But at the Atlantic? Beyond occasional shorter blog posts at its web site, we didn't used to see much of it. But there's no other way to describe a deeply flawed January 24 op-ed appearing there which sharply criticized ultrasound images of unborn children as an example of "how effectively politicians have used visual technology to redefine what counts as 'life.'"
Writer Moira Weigel is at least 40 years late with her extended rant against a stunning, hugely beneficial and groundbreaking technological advance.
Life Magazine first made the world aware that doctors could take "A 'Sonar' Look at an unborn Baby" in January 1965, but "it was well into the 1970s before it became widely used in American hospitals." Sadly, that was a few years after the January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
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In what remains of her op-ed, originally entitled "“How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That a Fetus Is a Person," but now called "How Ultrasound Became Political" (more on other revisions and corrections below), the very existence of ultrasound intensely bothers Weigel (bolds are mine throughout this post):
... Ultrasound made it possible for the male doctor to evaluate the fetus without female interference. (Note: Women were 20 percent of U.S. medical school enrollment by 1976. — Ed.)
... Doctors do not even call this rapidly dividing cell mass a “fetus” until nine weeks into pregnancy. Yet, the current debate shows how effectively politicians have used visual technology to redefine what counts as “life.”
Since the mid-1990s, opponents of abortion have deployed ultrasound in their attempts to restrict abortion access. Five states have enacted “informed consent” laws, which require doctors to show their patients ultrasound images, and in some cases to describe the images, before performing an abortion. Two of those laws have been struck down by state courts. Twenty other states require a doctor to at least offer to show a woman seeking an abortion ultrasound.
These measures are based on two assumptions: First, that an ultrasound image has an obvious meaning. Second, that any pregnant woman who sees an ultrasound will recognize this meaning. Science does not bear either assumption out.
One wants to ask Weigel, "If an ultrasound doesn't mean anything, and doesn't influence women's decisions to carry an unborn child to term, why are you so bent out of shape about its use?"
The answer is that Weigel really has to know better, as Nicole Russell wrote at the Federalist.com on Thursday. Doctors see the "obvious meaning" (links are in original):
... Doctors also know the value of ultrasounds. Although Dr. Stuart Campbell performed abortions for years, after he saw vivid 3-D ultrasound images, that was it for him: “Even a fetus lying there dead doesn’t convey the horror that one experiences seeing a baby moving its arms and legs, opening its mouth, sucking its thumb, and then thinking, gosh, somebody wants to, you know… It looks so vital. It has changed my view. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”
Dr. Joseph Randall, another former abortion provider, testified at a conference: “The greatest thing that got to us was the ultrasound.
Weigel herself wrote that the idea of using ultrasound to help mothers bond with their unborn child and mentally prepare for parenthood came from actual patient experiences documented in the early 1980s. But somehow, no other women have been influenced since? How absurd.
Weigel's effort was so deeply flawed that the Atlantic had to scramble to make corrections — and corrections of their corrections. Here is the current chronicle of those corrections, which, as Ed Morrissey at Hot Air asserted, should really be at the top, as seen at the end of the op-ed (numbering has been added by me):
- This article originally stated that there is “no heart to speak of” in a six-week-old fetus. By that point in a pregnancy, a heart has already begun to form. We regret the error.
- This article originally stated that the fetus was already suffering from a genetic disorder. We regret the error.
- This article originally stated that Bernard Nathanson headed the National Right-to-Life Committee and became a born-again Christian. Nathanson was active in but did not head the committee, and he converted to Roman Catholicism after The Silent Scream was produced. We regret the error.
- This article originally stated that the doctors claimed fetuses had no reflexive responses to medical instruments at 12 weeks. We regret the error.
- Finally, the article originally stated that John Kasich vetoed a bill from Indiana's legislature, instead of Ohio's legislature, after which the article was incorrectly amended to state that Mike Pence had vetoed the bill. We regret the errors.
Error 1 should have been caught by any editor with a pulse. "No heart to speak of" is nonsense verbiage. It's either there or it isn't. The Cleveland Clinic's Fetal Development: Stages of Growth says the following:
... The tiny "heart" tube will beat 65 times a minute by the end of the fourth week.
... At about 6 weeks, your baby's heart beat can usually be detected.
Coverage at the Washington Free Beacon identifies similar authoritative assertions.
Error 4 came about as the author tried to discredit the 1980s movie, The Silent Scream, which shows an unborn child at 12 weeks reacting to and putting up resistance to being aborted. The current fact is that “The earliest reactions to painful stimuli motor reflexes can be detected at 7.5 weeks of gestation." The larger contention that "unborn children become pain-capable between 18 and 28 weeks post-fertilization" is what the left, in other areas, likes to call "settled science." Before The Silent Scream and advances in prenatal research, proaborts contended that a unborn child does not feel pain during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
As Morrissey wrote of the Atlantic: "[T]heir primary regret has to be publishing a shockingly ignorant and warped attack on science itself." It seems now that virtually any attack on center-right beliefs is acceptable, no questions asked, at virtually any left-leaning outlet, and that it will be allowed to remain present, no matter how comprehensively discredited it becomes.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
