Chuck Donovan | The Washington Stand
Media Bias in Abortion Coverage
Any story about media coverage of abortion in the United States is ultimately an act of frustration. Name the last time a media representative, particularly in the cable universe, showed a baby delivered at 22 weeks of gestation. Or the last time they noted the recent data that nearly 36% of babies born at 22 weeks will survive and 82% will do so at 25 weeks (reports of even better save rates are emerging). How many media outlets share information and stories about the growing range of conditions that are amenable to treatment and can be cured inside the womb, illustrating the separate personhood and “patienthood” of these little ones? Images and accounts like these should be commonplace today, but on 24-hour-a-day networks like CNN and MSNBC they are nowhere to be seen.
Late-Term Abortions Are Not Medically Necessary
It is not just images that are missing. The mainstream media goes out of its way to obscure the reality that abortions done after 22 weeks are never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. Separations of the mother and the human being in her womb can be done by vaginal delivery or emergency c-section, under conditions which maximize the chances of survival of both. In fact, this highlights the ugly truth that abortion advocates want to hide: late-term abortions are done for the primary purpose, and by methods designed, to ensure that the baby does not survive the separation but rather dies in the process. The point of an abortion done after 22 weeks is clearly the death of the human being in utero.
The Exploitation of the Baby’s Remains
What the media also omit is that abortion clinics sell the bodies of these tiny human beings for research, often to local universities. Disregard the fact that the utility of these organs underscores the humanity of the one from whom they were harvested. One university’s federal grant application maintained that its source clinic minimizes “warm ischemic time” for the collection of the bodies of well-developed unborn children. That means that the baby is alive until the body parts are collected, because ischemic time commences at the time of death. These truths about late-term abortion have not been found fit to print or broadcast.
Media Denial and Misinformation
Instead, major media generally overlook such facts. Some do so by going one step further and denying that late-term abortion occurs — oddly enough, in some cases, denying they occur while citing statistics that report the actual numbers of such abortions. Occasionally, the media will tour facilities doing these procedures, attempting to salve their own and perhaps their viewers’ consciences by categorizing these abortions as “rare” or involving extreme risks to maternal health. In these reports, of course, babies may be discussed but do not appear, an exception to the media’s general willingness to depict graphic violence in the world. The vanishing right to live has been varnished over with the vanishing right to be seen.
The Expansion of All-Term Abortion Facilities
All this aside, there is no denying the accumulating proof that taking the lives of children up to the moment of birth continues to expand in the United States. Generally, states with all-term abortion laws are the primary sites for such expansion. Consider the new facility dubbed the Valley Abortion Group in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its name is plain (no other services are provided to garland its offerings) and its website is straightforward: “We provide abortion care in all stages of pregnancy,” it reads. The VAG is proud of its rather unique philosophy, which proclaims:
“VAG clinic is the first Queer and BIPOC-led abortion clinic in the country. We are located on traditional, unceded Tiwa territory, also known asAlbuquerque, New Mexico. Our patient care follows an anti-racist and survivor-centered model. We believe in empowering patients by prioritizing their rights, safety, well-being, needs, and wishes. We welcome and support patients from other states and countries.”
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Cultural Exploitation in the Pro-Abortion Movement
The site offers help with travel arrangements, funding the abortion (which may take up to three or four days and is without doubt an expensive and harrowing experience), “spiritual services,” and grief support. There are no babies depicted on the site. Tiwa is another name for the Tigua group of Pueblo Indians whose ancient land is situated in this part of New Mexico. The allusion by the abortion group is deceptive, since opposition to abortion among Native Americans is typically strong, as a 2020 essay by Elizabeth Terrill in the Navajo Times recounted. A member of the Osage tribe, Terrill wrote, “By our culture we know the importance of our children. Our children are our future, and our children are the heart and soul of our families, clans, and tribes.” Exploiting tribal heritage to justify the claims of a new abortion enterprise merely adds a cultural crime to the human injury.
Legalization and Expansion of Late-Term Abortion
New Mexico, with the highest abortion rate in the nation, is not the only locale for open embrace of legal abortion until birth. As a January 2025 report by Tessa Cox and Dr. Ingrid Skop from the Charlotte Lozier Institute summarizes it, nine states and the District of Columbia have adopted policies that establish no limit on how late in pregnancy an abortion can be carried out. Several other states have approved state constitutional amendments that permit abortions until the end of pregnancy, with the only limit the practical one of a limited number of abortionists willing in some states to commit these gruesome acts.
Legislative Efforts to Enshrine Unlimited Abortion
Meanwhile, bills are being introduced in other states to further cement absolute abortion allowance, often with taxpayer dollars. In Washington State, the majority Democrats have introduced a measure to add abortion on demand, already largely legal throughout pregnancy, to the state constitution. Senate Joint Resolution 8204 is barely a full page. It says that “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom decisions, which includes the individual’s fundamental right to choose to have an abortion[.]” The language is sweeping. “Interference,” broadly construed, would seem to rule out parental consent, spousal notice, and informed consent. “Individual” would appear to override any protections for minor children. There is no mention of the stage of pregnancy. The bill now has 28 sponsors, all Democrats in the Washington Senate, and the support of former Democratic Governor Jay Inslee. If approved, the amendment would be put to popular vote in the next general election.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, the General Assembly has completed 2025 action on a proposed constitutional amendment to protect unlimited abortion in the commonwealth. SJ 247, subtitled a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” contains similar language to the Washington State proposal but faces a steeper challenge to inclusion in the state constitution. It asserts “[t]hat every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”
It goes on to allow the state to regulate abortion only on the deferential terms the U.S. Supreme Court has established as the doctrine of strict scrutiny: “An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be, directly or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” The amendment proceeds to create its own definition of strict scrutiny that would doom nearly any limit that does not focus on the health of the woman (that suspect term is not used) seeking an abortion. The proposal must pass the general assembly again before it can be placed on the ballot in 2026.
Rising Late-Term Abortion Numbers
Late-term abortions already occur in Virginia and Washington state. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, Virginia tallied 16,722 abortions, an increase of 4% from the previous year. For abortions at 21 weeks of pregnancy or later, the abortion count rose in 2022 by 118%, from 103 to 225. Washington reported a 24% increase in abortions to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control from 2021 to 2022.
Like Virginia, Washington also saw a large increase in late-term abortion (at or after 21 weeks of gestation), rising 60% from 329 abortions to 525 abortions. For perspective, there were 5,151 children killed or wounded by firearms in 2024, a terrible toll. In 2023, some 9,300 unborn children were slain at 21 weeks of gestation or later. Guttmacher Institute labels only one of these datapoints as “rare.”
The Democratic Party’s Radical Abortion Agenda
Two insights are straightforward. Late-term abortions are legal for elective reasons in much of the United States, and the Democratic Party is their prime advocate. The 2024 national Democratic Party Platform endorses not a single limit on abortion but pledges in turn to expand it and to repeal the Hyde Amendment limiting taxpayer funding for it. The party’s proposal for universal health insurance in the form of Medicare for All, as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) envisions it, would make every abortion and sex change procedure in the United States taxpayer-funded.
Republican Response and the Need for Federal Action
But what of the Republicans? Within recent memory, party leaders debated fiercely with reporters who claimed, absurdly, that late-term abortions were not a concern in the United States. But it is clearer than ever that they are a concern, and there is no prospect of protecting these children in nearly half the states without a federal law on their side. The votes may not be sufficient in Congress to adopt such protections now, but with strong majority public support for limits, the final tally may be closer than some think.
The debate might even prompt the media to show some of the little faces and hands whose fate we are talking about.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.
