Never Trust New York Times Reporting on Abortion

Earlier this week, the New York Times ran an article by Kate Zernike about pro-life activists’ goals for a second Trump administration. The heavily pro-choice core readership of the Times is likely to come away from this article scared about a Trump victory. But it will also have absorbed a picture of pro-lifers — and about federal law, and about how a Trump administration could use it — that is misleading in multiple respects. A few of the problems:

(1) Perhaps the most misleading passage of the article says that many anti-abortion activists argue that even when pregnancies seem to threaten mothers’ lives, “women should carry pregnancies until the fetus or child dies on its own.” She links to a statement from the pro-life Lozier Institute — but that statement makes no such claim. Other reports from the institute have said the opposite: that there are “rare and heartbreaking circumstances when [abortion] is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.”

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Earlier this week, the New York Times ran an article by Kate Zernike about pro-life activists’ goals for a second Trump administration. The heavily pro-choice core readership of the Times is likely to come away from this article scared about a Trump victory. But it will also have absorbed a picture of pro-lifers — and about federal law, and about how a Trump administration could use it — that is misleading in multiple respects. A few of the problems:

(1) Perhaps the most misleading passage of the article says that many anti-abortion activists argue that even when pregnancies seem to threaten mothers’ lives, “women should carry pregnancies until the fetus or child dies on its own.” She links to a statement from the pro-life Lozier Institute — but that statement makes no such claim. Other reports from the institute have said the opposite: that there are “rare and heartbreaking circumstances when [abortion] is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.”