Unexamined Premises, Hidden Agendas: the New York Times and Planned Parenthood

The New York Times‘s Shaila Dewan, in her February 26 article “To Court Blacks, Foes of Abortion Make Racial Case,” put her foot in her mouth, metaphorically speaking, and illustrated years of MSM misinformation concerning blacks and abortion.

Her article starts out as a factual report on how “the largely white staff of Georgia Right to Life” – who cares what color they are, and what’s “largely” mean? – has enhanced its efforts to address the “high number of black women who undergo abortions.”

Then, at the 150-words mark, comes the first of her foot insertions.

foot_in_mouth

Across the country, the anti-abortion movement, long viewed as almost exclusively white and Republican, is turning its attention to African-Americans and encouraging black abortion opponents across the country to become more active.

“Long-viewed” as a result of what image projection source? Who has long promoted that view?

Ms. Dewan’s mentions the effective anti-abortion role among blacks being played by a documentary that links “slavery, Nazi-style eugenics, birth control and abortion.” She identifies the creator of the film as “a white abortion opponent” who used “young white conservatives” in a “sting operation” to tape Planned Parenthood employees accepting donations designated for abortions for black women.

What’s with all the color references? (Later Ms. Dewan keeps alive the myth that James O’Keefe III was arrested “on charges that he tried to tamper with the telephones of Senator Mary L. Landrieu.” See his statement here.)

She quotes a black pastor and abortion opponent saying,

The game changes when blacks get involved. And in the pro-life movement, a lot of the groups that have been ignored for years, they’re now getting galvanized.

Ignored for years? By whom? The MSM perhaps?

When Big Journalism asked Mark Crutcher, who created the documentary, what attention his film had received by the MSM he said,

They ignored it.

We’re shocked!

Next, Ms. Dewan states that,

The factors fueling the focus on black women — an abortion rate far higher than that of other races and the ties between the effort to legalize and popularize birth control and eugenics — are, at heart, old news. But they have been given exaggerated new life by the Internet, slick repackaging, high production values and money, like the more than $20,000 that Georgia Right to Life invested in the billboards.

Georgia billboard

Note the adjectival spin: “exaggerated new life… slick repackaging… high production values and money,” all conveying manipulative and diabolical connotations. (In the audio version of this there would be dark, evil music in the background.) Then there’s that whopping figure of 20 grand! Toward the end of the piece Ms. Dewan will report that the entrapment of Planned Parenthood employees, wherein they accept donations for the abortion of black children,…

… led to calls by black leaders to withdraw financing of Planned Parenthood, which receives about $350 million a year in government money for education and medical services.

$20,000 versus $350,000,000! Even Timmy Geithner knows the first number is much smaller than the second.

Ms. Dewan does another foot insertion as she quotes Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union who confessed shock at hearing that blacks make up 40% of the nations abortions but only 13% of the population.

I just really assumed that white people aborted more than anyone else, and black people would not do this because we’re culturally a religious people, we have large families,” Ms. Gardner said.

So, who led Ms. Gardner to that erroneous assumption? Must be the MSM. Wasn’t the Boy Scouts.

With yet another reference to a gestalt moment, this one experienced by the black woman, Catherine Davis, hired by Georgia Right to Life to reach out to black women, we read:

The more I dug into it, the more vast I found that the network [of abortion clinics in black neighborhoods] was,” Ms. Davis said. “And I realized that African-American women just did not know the truth, they did not understand the truth about the abortion industry.

So who didn’t tell African-American women them the truth? The MSM is alone in the line-up of suspects. Or, did the MSM not care to know the truth? Ignorant by design? Either way it’s not a pretty picture for the MSM. Ms. Dewan is killin’ em.

3stooges

In this last quote, Ms. Dewan puts her foot in mouth, up to the knee, as she aims to defuse accusations against Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger concerning her association with eugenics.

Scholars acknowledge that Sanger did ally herself with eugenics, at the time a mainstream movement, but said she believed that birth control, sterilization and abortion should be voluntary and not based on race…”It’s unfair to characterize those efforts as racially targeted in a negative way,” said Ellen Chesler, a historian and Sanger biographer, who is now on the board of Planned Parenthood.

So…what does racially targeted in a positive way mean?

Note to Ms. Dewan: Grasp foot in mouth with both hands at the ankle. Pull forward sharply to remove. Cover teeth with lip to minimize abrasions.

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