Message #66848

[Mark]

NPR: A Baby's Heartbeat Is Just 'Sounds From The Fetus'

As I drove past NPR’s building in Washington DC Tuesday night, the words scrolling across the neon ticker caught my attention: “Republican governor decided the time-limit measure is more likely to withstand legal challenges than a separate bill tied to sounds from the fetus,” it read.

Surely this descriptor — “bill tied to sounds from the fetus”– isn’t referencing the “heartbeat bill” Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoed Tuesday, which limits abortion to roughly the first six weeks of a pregnancy, or before an unborn baby’s heartbeat can be detected via an ultrasound. NPR couldn’t possibly be so cowardly as to describe baby’s heartbeat inside the womb as “sounds from the fetus,” right?

Oh, but they are. A quick search on NPR’s site led me to this story about Kasich’s decision to sign a bill restricting abortion to the first 20 weeks of gestation. On the same day, the Republican governor vetoed the “so-called-heartbeat-ban” claiming that it wasn’t constitutionally sound, the story reads.

An excerpt of the story contains the phrase “sounds from the fetus” to describe a baby’s heartbeat, which you can see by clicking here or by checking out the screen grab below.



Come on, NPR. You ought to be better than this.

It’s time the media has an honest dialogue about what abortion is instead of couching it in sterile terms like “fetus,” “tissue,” or “sounds from the fetus.” Instead they ought to use terms like “baby,” “organs,” and “heartbeat,” because that’s what these things are. Euphemisms equal bias. With this description, NPR is putting its hand on the scale. NPR and other so-called objective media entities ought to be honest about what abortion is: the killing of an unborn child in the womb. To pretend that it’s this sterile medical procedure in which everyone benefits is a lie intended to mislead the public.

Americans aren’t dumb. They know exactly what abortion is, which is why 80 percent of Americans think abortion should be restricted to the first trimester. It’s why 78 percent of pregnant women decide against an abortion after seeing an ultrasound image of their child in the womb. Outlets like NPR ought not to be so dishonest about abortion or risk losing the trust of their readers even more than they already have.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/14/npr-babys-heartbeat-just-sounds-fetus/