Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in April, CNSNews.com managed to publish an article about Sandra Fluke being a "national figure" without mentioning the fact that she became one due to Rush Limbaugh spending three days denigrating her as a "slut" and a "prostitute" for talking about birth control in public.
CNS pulled off that little trick again in a Sept. 6 article by Susan Jones on Fluke's speech at the Democratic National Convention. She wrote:
Fluke, now an attorney, headed a "reproductive justice" group during her days at Georgetown Law School.
At an unofficial House hearing staged by Democrats last February, she said she chose to go to law school at Georgetown because it offers a quality education, but she also expected the school to accommodate students who do not share the Catholic belief that contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization are immoral.
“When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage," Fluke testified at an unofficial house hearing in February 2012.
Jones curiously didn't mention what happened after that hearing: Limbaugh's three-day misogynistic tirade. Indeed, Limbaugh is mentioned nowhere in Jones' article.
Jones also misleads about anti-abortion legislation that Fluke opposes:
Fluke and others have interpreted the Protect Life Act to mean that women denied abortion coverage would be left to die. ("When the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor, and health care providers do not have to intervene," Rep. Nancy Pelosi said in Dec. 2011.)
(In fact, the text of the bill does make exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.)
In fact, the part of the bill that could cause pregnant women to die is a "conscience clause" that would allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.
Jones also ignored the fact that anti-abortion congressmen tried to narrowly define the rape exemption as applying only to "forcible rape," which could be defined as excluding pregnancy from statutory rape or rape while a woman is drugged.
Jones' article is dishonest and incomplete. Is that the standard of right-wing journalism today?
