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June 29, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – You’d think that after working fulltime in the pro-life movement for over a decade, the perniciousness of the media’s pro-abortion bias would be old news to me. Once in a while, however, a story showcases again the extent to which the public is lied to. Exhibit A is a recent piece in the New Zealand Herald, titled “Abortion tragedy: Couple left to terminate pregnancy at 25 weeks after midwife misses two ultrasounds.”
When I first spotted the headline, I assumed that by “abortion tragedy” the Herald was referring to a story such as the recent case in Ireland of parents who aborted a baby they were told had a fatal fetal abnormality before being told, after their child had been killed, that he’d been perfectly healthy. But no – this was not that sort of “abortion tragedy.”
This is the story of a young couple who made the “gruelling decision to terminate their first pregnancy at 25 weeks after a midwife failed to read two earlier ultrasounds showing significant abnormalities.” You’ll notice that the article says the couple terminated a “pregnancy” rather than a baby, although obviously it was the child who suffered from abnormalities rather than the pregnancy. The article continued: “If the scans had been read by the midwife, problems with the pregnancy would likely have been picked up four weeks earlier.”
The couple was upset because they were “forced to make a decision on an abortion,” although they were not forced to make any such decision. They were under no obligation to consider having their child killed just because the baby wasn’t physically perfect, and it is frankly disgusting that the Herald wants us to believe that they were. The couple did, however, decide to abort their baby, which the Herald calls a “tragic loss” as if the couple and the abortionist had nothing to do with the child’s gruesome demise.
Further to that, the couple recently “won an apology from the midwife” after New Zealand’s Health and Disability Commission investigated the case and confirmed that she had not read the ultrasound scans properly. If she had, the couple could have had their child killed earlier, which, presumably, would have made this not a “tragic loss.” The midwife ended up quitting over the incident.
This is insidious. The entire scenario is presented as that of a couple who were tragically denied the opportunity to abort their child at an earlier stage because of medical incompetence – as if abortion was the only option. As if loving an “imperfect child” wasn’t an option. As if not having their child killed was not an option. This is a symptom of a sick society: that those who do not measure up to our arbitrary standard of what constitutes a life worth living must be killed in the womb, the sooner the better.
The conservative Irish media outlet Gript recently published a heartbreaking editorial on precisely this mindset titled “NMH case lays bare shocking truth about families pushed towards abortion.” A mother describes the moment she discovered that her child was “incompatible with life” – as in, unlikely to survive very long after birth:
We were obviously deeply shocked and upset. It’s possibly the most terrible news that a parent can receive. In my distress, I asked the doctor what we could do, meaning what could we do to help her. To my horror, he told me that I could ‘pop’ over to England – obviously to have an abortion.
I felt sick. We were in a modern maternity hospital in Dublin, and there was a 15-inch screen in front of me showing my little daughter. She was sucking her fingers, she was kicking, she was so beautiful. I knew now that she had this condition, and that she needed me and I would protect her.
Why was abortion the very first option offered to me – a distraught and terrified mum whose world had just been shattered? I wasn’t offered any information about the condition, such as a factual booklet or a website which might have helped me connect with other parents who had been in this situation. Instead I was told I could ‘pop’ off and end my daughter’s life. It still makes me angry.
It should. It should make us all angry. These children have the right to life. They have the right to our protection. They have the right to the love of their parents. And they should not be portrayed as a problem to dispose with through forceps and suction aspirators.
