On Thursday's Amanpour and Company on PBS, host Christiane Amanpour spent more than 20 minutes covering newly passed laws restricting abortion in a number of states, but only heard from the pro-abortion side as she spoke with liberal activist Gloria Steinem for almost 10 minutes, and then Planned Parenthood member, Dr. David Eisenberg, who performs abortions in Missouri.
After recalling that Alabama Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed into law strong restrictions against abortion, with a major goal of the law being to push the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, Amanpour introduced Steinem as the PBS host continued: "Few people know this issue like Gloria Steinem. She's been on the leading edge of feminism ever since the 1960s. She's devoted her life to women's rights."
Amanpour then began by posing: "You have been fighting this fight and all fights for women's rights for so many years. Did you see this coming? In other words, this gradual, state-by-state, infringement on Roe v. Wade?"
Steinem hyperbolically declared that women are not seen as "human," as she claimed that there is "profound sexism that does not recognize that a woman's life is not human life."
And, even though minorities have abortions at disproportionately higher rates, she also blamed white nationalists for the push against abortion because they are concerned about white women not having enough children.
Amanpour barely pushed back as she responded:
Gloria, I'm actually fascinated to hear you put it in that political context because what most of those people who will say that we believe in the sanctity of life -- no matter what, how, or where it starts, even in cases of rape or incest. But you're saying it's a much more patriarchal -- and you've just said racist democratic political power tool.
Even though it is pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood that have blunted the population growth of minorities, she brought up the history of black women being sterilized as if it were a point against opponents of abortion:
Yes, I mean, historically, two things have happened -- that is, abortion has been restricted, and, for women of color, sterilization has been encouraged. I mean, I remember very well going to interview Fannie Lou Hamer -- a great civil rights worker -- who had been sterilized in a Southern hospital where she went for other procedures -- without her knowledge.
She added: "So this is patriarchal in the sense that the only thing that men cannot control is birth because they don't have wombs. So it is fundamentally patriarchal and profoundly racist."
Amanpour then bolstered her liberal guest's views by displaying photographs of all the men in the Alabama state senate who voted for the state's abortion ban as she remarked:
I just do want to put up a picture because I think it sort of hammered home what you're saying about the patriarchy. The makeup of the senate in Alabama, as you can see, is practically all men. And it is, you know, it's something that many, many people have commented on in the wake of this new law.
Steinem soon repeated her attempt to liken the pro-life movement to Nazis as she recalled Adolf Hitler closing abortion providers in Germany.
After wrapping up her interview with Steinmen, Amanpour immediately brought aboard Dr. Eisenberg. In one question, she described him as providing "help" to women in providing abortions: "What is it like for you to get up every morning as the last practitioner (in Missouri) and actually, you know, help these women who need it?"
She undercored an extreme portion of abortion cases as she added: "But particularly women who have been violently made pregnant through rape, incest, and the other terrible things that happen to so many women today."
