Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how CNSNews.com has promoted a right-wing effort to ban mifepristone abortion pills, and it has continued to launch attacks on them. After the Food and Drug Administration ruled that abortion pills could be obtained from pharmcists, a Jan. 4 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman called on anti-abortion activists (which not honestly labeled as such) to fearmonger about them:
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who now advocates for life, said in a statement, "I've had two abortions and one of them was the abortion pill -- it was horrific. I was alone, in immense pain, and bleeding profusely."
"The thing is, it almost doesn't even matter that the FDA is allowing the abortion pill to be more widely available because the women aren't seeing a doctor either way," said Johnson. "They aren't having ultrasounds and some aren't even verifying they are pregnant."
"While the abortion lobby will say this move is a huge step forward for women, it's only a step forward for them and for those who manufacture the abortion pills because it means more money for them while throwing women under the bus," added Johnson.
Some of the potential side effects of Mifeprex include fatal infection and prolonged heavy bleeding, according to the product's label.
A Jan. 18 article by Spencer J. Fairfield promoted how "Twenty-two U.S. attorneys general have sent a letter to the FDA regarding its new policy that allows the abortion pill, mifepristone, to be sold in pharmacies, stating this is an abandonment of 'commonsense restrictions,' and is 'illegal and dangerous.' In the past, the drug could only be obtained directly from a physician and had to be ingested in the doctor’s presence." Fairfield censored the fact that all of these attorneys gheneral are Republican. Fairfield followed up with a Jan. 23 article hyping an anti-abortion doctor fearmongering about the pill:
At the 50th Annual March for Life on Jan. 20, Dr. Ingrid Skop, a Texas OB/GYN who has delivered more than 5,000 babies, shared her knowledge about the dangers of chemical abortion drugs (mifepristone). Skop told CNSNews that the FDA’s decision to allow abortion pills to be sold in retail pharmacies is “clearly politically driven,” and that “the FDA is basing their decisions on studies that undercount complications.”
“It is clearly politically driven because every time the FDA has loosened restrictions on Mifepristone it’s been in a Democrat administration,” said Dr. Skop. “But the other thing that’s happening, the abortion industry publishes studies to promote their product.”
“They will usually say it’s 99 or 98 percent effective, but they are doing that based on flawed data,” said the doctor. “Because, again, they are only talking about the women they know of that had a complication. But if the women do not come back to them, if they come to me (or other OBGYNs) nobody knows about those complications. So, the FDA is basing their decisions on studies that undercount complications.”
Fairfield refused to interview anyone who contradicted Skop's biased view. In a Feb. 3 article, Fairfield exploited a woman's death to fearmonger about the pill:
It was reported this week that a 19-year-old Canadian woman died on July 4, 2022 apparently after using the abortion drug, Mifegymiso, the brand name for mifepristone. Pete Baklinski, director of communications at Campaign Life Coalition in Ottowa, said that Canada’s healthcare system should declare that medication abortion in general is “an imminent hazard to public health.”
“This human pesticide is not only deadly to the smallest members of the human family, but to pregnant mothers as well,” said Baklinski. “The abortion pill must be immediately pulled from the Canadian market. Health Canada must declare it an imminent hazard to public health.”
Fairfield quoted only anti-abortion activists bashing the pill and censored evidence of the pill's safety, particularly compared with pregnancy.
It wasn't until a Feb. 24 article by Melanie Arter that CNS gave significant space to arguments in favor of mifepristone:
Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that pro-life efforts to prevent access to the abortion drug mifepristone amounts to “‘an attack on the very foundation of our public health system.”
[...]
“That medication is called mifepristone. It is a drug that is used to perform medication abortion,” the vice president said.
“It is FDA approved and was approved 20 years ago, after a strenuous peer-reviewed process of determining that it is safe and appropriate for its intended use, but there are now partisan and political attacks attempting to question the legitimacy of a group of scientists and doctors who have studied the significance of this drug,” Harris said.
"There is now an attempt by politicians to remove it from the ability of doctors to prescribe and the ability of people to receive,” she said.
Unlike with stories focused on anti-abortion activists, Arter made sure to note anti-abortion activists criticizing the pill.
CNS also published commentaries from anti-abortion activists that attacked mifepristone without balance or pushback, such as a Jan. 9 commentary by Lynne Marie Kohm maliciously described it as "chemical abortion." Dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue spent a Jan. 18 column attacking New York City Mayor Eric Adams for making available for free at one clinic in the city:
More important is where Adams decided to open his freebies abortion clinic. The first of four such clinics opened today in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, more generally known as the South Bronx.
Guess who lives there? Almost 6 in 10 are Hispanic and 36 percent are black. The white population is 3.2 percent and the figure for Asians is 0.6 percent. The poverty rate in New York City is 16 percent, but in the Bronx, the figure is 26.4 percent. In Morrisania it is 40.3 percent. Its serious crime rate is double the city average.
Some things never change. Why is it that liberals always favor black and brown neighborhoods to set up their abortion clinics?
Yes, Donohue is accusing a black man of being racist against black people. that gave Donohue license to repeat a dcouple false anti-abortion tropes:
Rev. Dean Nelson, a black minister who directs Human Coalition Action, notes that “nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities [are] located within walking distance to Black neighborhoods.”
It is undeniably true that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a notorious racist. The KKK must have been proud of her efforts to help abort black babies.
As we've documented, Sanger was not a "notorious racist," and most abortion clinics are locatd in white neighborhoods.
Another anti-abortion activist, Patty Knap, raged against increased availability of mifepristone -- a name she refused to use, instead calling it "abortion pills" instead -- in a Jan. 30 commentary wildly accusing the "abortion industry" of profiteering:
A crucial aspect of allowing pharmacies to sell abortion pills that has not been talked about very much is the wholesale elimination in the process of possible life-affirming intervention by pregnancy help organizations prior to a woman procuring a chemical abortion.
For the profit-motivated abortion industry, bypassing the very people prepared to help women choose life is a big win.
The abortion lobby has been determined to cut out in-person doctor visits for a woman to obtain abortion drugs to get dangerous abortion pills into the hands of pregnant moms faster before anyone can offer her help with her pregnancy. Abortion pills are also more profitable than surgical abortions because there is no brick-and-mortar-building and associated costs, or actual hands-on procedure involved.
Now President Joe Biden has come through for abortionists and granted their wish, with the FDA recently announcing that abortion pills can be sold at your neighborhood pharmacy.
This means that these abortions require neither a visit to the doctor nor even a pregnancy test.
Knap didn't explain how reducing doctor visits equates to profiteering. Instead, she expressed her real fear, that anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" can't interfere in the process:
Many pregnancy centers throughout the country are purposefully located near abortion centers. Likewise, the people who pray at those abortion facilities offer the truth and real help to young moms heading inside for an abortion by encouraging them to instead visit the pregnancy centers. The compassionate efforts of both result in babies being saved and moms being spared a lifetime of agony.
Without the need to go in person to a Planned Parenthood or other abortion center, there’s no chance a pregnant mom has of seeing her baby’s ultrasound, no chance of hearing about available help, or hearing about couples who ready and eager to adopt.
[...]
Conversely, the significance of the life-affirming work of the nearly 3,000 pregnancy centers across the country cannot be overestimated, as thousands of lives are saved each year through their life-affirming intervention.
These life-saving interactions will be impeded with abortion pills available via a mere run into a corner drug store.
That declining opportunity to interfere seems to be what Knap really fears.
