The Washington Post headline on a Friday story on over-the-counter abortifacients ("morning after" pills) for middle-schoolers was "Administration's Plan B move draws strong and mixed reaction." That's a terrible headline, because reporters Anne Kornblut and N.B. Aizenman only sought out liberal reaction, and then provided a Team Obama defense. Conservative reaction was omitted. (Why would conservatives read The Washington Post? Certainly not to read about themselves.) Worse yet, the Post routinely labeled feminist defenders of "morning after" pills for sexually active sixth graders as "women's rights advocates" -- when they're fighting for the sexual opportunities of sixth-graders.
There was real comedy in the story, from ultraliberal Senator Patty Murray, suddenly in the tank for Big Pharmaceuticals: "Pharmaceutical companies here in this country make some very expensive decisions, and they need to know the FDA is going to make a decision based on science."
Liberal journalists pretend that "women" almost universally favor abortion and sexual "liberation." The "women's rights advocates" kicked in right at the beginning:
-- President Obama on Thursday defended his administration's decision to block unrestricted sales of the morning-after pill as a "common-sense" parenting choice, even as women's rights advocates condemned it as a cynical move that could provoke a damaging political backlash for the president next year.
-- Although the decision, announced Wednesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, angered women's groups, some of the president's allies said that allowing the FDA ruling to stand could potentially have been more politically damaging for Obama if he was portrayed as giving teenage girls unfettered access to the morning-after pill. (That's paragraph 3).
-- A senior Democratic Senate staffer said women's advocates were also convinced of the White House's political involvement given Sebelius's record of supporting abortion rights while governor of Kansas. (Paragraph 15)
-- Some advocates on women's issues said the president risks losing that base of support if he is perceived as curtailing access to contraceptives. (Paragraph 18)
The only use of "liberal" in the story came for the Center for American Progress fulminating against conservatives:
“The political calculations that the administration is making around this are disheartening,” Jessica Arons of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress said. “They seem to be very concerned with conservative, religious voters, and are trying to maintain what margins they can with that audience. But it’s missing the forest for the trees.”
Perhaps it's the liberals that are missing the forest: you don't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool "conservative" to object to the pharmacy helping sixth-graders conceal sexual activity from their parents.
