NPR has a seriously bad habit of running “news” stories that are stuffed with liberals...who then aren’t called liberals. On Thursday’s All Things Considered, NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner reported on how Team Obama is queasy about letting girls under 15 – middle-school girls -- get access to “emergency contraceptives,” even after a federal judge mandated they be sold to all ages.
As Rovner put it, “the administration's decision to appeal that ruling has outraged many of the president's allies in the women's health community.” That’s what they call the aggressively “sex-positive” feminists. The only “conservative” view in this story was...Obama! Well, that's not fair. The Obama quotes they used were liberal-pleasers, too. Everyone else wanted to make America safe for sixth-grade sex.
Of course, Rovner never put it that way. Rovner began her radio-by-and-for-liberals story by just sticking to how liberals are disappointed Obama hasn’t grasped that their position to sell "Plan B" to all ages is the scientific and idealistic one that doesn’t involve politics:
The whole blowup over the administration's refusal to make the morning-after pill more widely available, despite the recommendation of its own scientists, is striking even many of the president's allies as ironic. That's because President Obama has been front and center on both the issues of reproductive rights and the intersection of science and politics over the past week.
Notice how "the whole blowup" is only on the liberal side. There's no blowup from a parent who's appalled at the liberal view that you're never too young to have precious "access" to contraceptives and abortions.
Rovner ran a quote from Obama’s “historic” speech to Planned Parenthood – which NPR previously ignored: “When it comes to a woman's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you.” Then she ran a snippet from a speech to the National Academy of Sciences a few days later: “But in all the sciences, we've got to make sure that we are supporting the idea that they're not subject to politics.”
There you have it: by having any moral scruple or objection to sex under 15, a person is anti-woman and unscientific. As usual, NPR never finds it ridiculous to include 12-year-old girls in the word “women.” NPR is just channeling the liberal objections:
ROVNER: But now, many women's health advocates say the administration isn't putting its actions where the president's rhetoric has just been.
NANCY NORTHUP: It doesn't square and that is what is so disappointing.
ROVNER: Nancy Northup is president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. It's one of the groups involved in the lawsuit against the administration over emergency contraception that's prompted this week's activity. The judge in the case has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make Plan B available without a prescription to everyone.
NORTHUP: There couldn't be a clearer record than there is in this case that emergency contraception is safe and effective for all ages; that we had not one but two administrations who continued to put what they judged as the politics of the issue about contraception ahead of what's doing right for the public health.
Rovner also quoted Cora Breuner with the American Academy of Pediatrics who can’t stand uptight people who have moral concerns: "We get derailed over and over again about people's ethic and moral concerns about whether teens should be sexually active, and not into the fact that this is a safe drug that can be and should be available to all women of reproductive age."
Then Rovner finished with Susan Wood, an activist who left the Food and Drug Administration under President Bush for his "failure" to bend to "science," that is, her liberal will:
ROVNER: Women's health advocates say even the steps the FDA did take this week -- to lower the age for sale without a prescription from 17 to 15 -- doesn't do much because they still have to show an ID. Susan Wood is a former assistant commissioner for women's health at FDA.
SUSAN WOOD: Really, 15 and 16-year-olds are much less likely to have an actual government ID with your birth date on it, so that doesn't really expand access to that age group very much.
ROVNER: What most worries women's health groups though is the prospect of extending even longer a fight that's already more than a decade old. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
Rovner is the perfect publicist for this lobby. She concluded by expressing disgust that there's still a debate -- and she certainly demonstrated she had no interest in allowing a debate on taxpayer-funded radio stations across America. Fairness? Balance? That's for obstructionists.
