Shamless abortion: Why are we surprised?

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Shameless Abortion Carnival

by Brent Bozell

If anyone was looking for a self-righteous extreme feminist, they found one in Angie Jackson. This is a woman who was so proud she was aborting her baby that she announced she would "tweet" her chemical-cocktail abortion live, as it happened, on Twitter. The liberal media found this made-for-TV slaughter fascinating, and not at all a controversy worthy of discussing with two sides.

Newsweek's Sarah Kliff proclaimed: "One hundred thousand people have watched Angie Jackson's abortion. Late last month, Jackson posted a video of herself to YouTube, recorded after she took RU-486, a medication used to end pregnancies." Kliff asked only "why shame remains" about the act of killing one's baby. Jackson was honored for her courage in "demystifying" and "destigmatizing" the procedure: "We need 10,000 more of her," proclaimed Peg Johnston, chair of something called the Abortion Care Network. This desire for 10,000 more unashamed abortions is what "pro-choice" is all about.

Overall, this was just another classic tale from the "news" magazine that lamented 20 years ago that "Sadly, many home (abortion) remedies could damage a fetus instead of kill it." What about the pro-life side?

Newsweek devoted just one sentence to Silent No More, a website where women tell a different abortion story and now speak publicly of their shame and regret. But women are increasingly coming forward everywhere, just like the original "Jane Roe," Norma McCorvey, publicly admitting the horror of their actions, genuinely penitent -- and genuinely forgiven. But their stories aren't deemed "newsworthy."

CNN interviewed Angie Jackson on the morning of March 8, and they were explicit in rejecting any notion that Jackson deserved a rebuttal. Anchor Kyra Phillips declared after the interview that "as you can imagine, we received a lot of response about even doing this story because abortion is such a controversial issue, and we really didn't want to get into a debate about abortion, but rather, look at what people are doing now, using social networking."

That's a unique concept: Abortion is so controversial that we feel it's best to only let one side talk -- the side that's taking a child's life on camera.

CNN claims these days that they are the sober and neutral center between MSNBC and Fox News, but there was nothing neutral about their sympathy for Jackson. Phillips rushed to proclaim that the most savage part of Jackson's abortion was the pro-lifer comments.

"These are really harsh," the anchor warned. "But people wrote in and said -- they called you all kinds of names, from being a whore to someone who just couldn't keep her legs closed. They called you a baby killer. I mean, it's even hard for me to say these things because some of those -- the e-mails and the responses were so brutal."

As brutal as an abortion? Worse than that, Phillips never acknowledged that pro-lifers most certainly filled Twitter (and the heavens) with their hopes and prayers for her. CNN cannot deny those e-mails were there.

CNN also showed some of Jackson's horrific YouTube video, where she admitted that her baby had the "potential" for life, "but it (it!) was more likely to kill me, and you're not going to shame me. ... I do not feel sorry that I saved my life. I do not feel sorry that I stayed here for myself, for my boyfriend, for my kid that I've already got."

CNN didn't define that sentiment -- or lack of it -- as "really harsh." CNN never told their viewers that Jackson's nom de plume on Twitter is "Anti-Theist Angie." Nor did CNN consider the "brutal" contents of Jackson's Twitter page to be worth commentary. Here are some examples of statements Jackson "retweeted" as worthy comments about Jesus after she popped up on CNN:

"Who would Jesus do? He'd totally do Anti-Theist Angie just to prove a point to those who sully his/her name."

And: "Where would Jesus donate? To science-based education, and better abortion techniques!"

And: "Jesus hates the little women, all the women of the world."

To their credit, when ABC's "World News" hyped this story Feb. 28, they at least allowed conservative Cathy Ruse of the Family Research Council to declare, "Your heart breaks for this woman. And I hope that it doesn't encourage, I hope that what she's doing won't encourage others to take this path." ABC's online story also allowed a few paragraphs of pro-life argument.

ABC weekend anchor Dan Harris noted Jackson was an "outspoken atheist," and quoted her saying, "I hope everybody on YouTube has a great and godless day. Peace."

Jackson said she was four weeks pregnant when she aborted her child. The technology now exists to see just about every human feature -- eyes, hands, feet, even the human nipple -- on a "fetus" 1 inch in size, and only two weeks older. Peace.

About The Author

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Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.