monday, October 22, 1979
daily nebreskan
Attitude shift noted
Pro-lifers criticize media
WASHINGTON-In the Dast few vears. or at least sinr
the Supreme Court's 1973 decision on abortion, I have
met few opponents of abortion who think the media have
been fair to their side.
John T. Noonan, a University of California law profes
sor and one of the most intellectually respectable voices
in the pro-life movement, has documented a strong case
against the media. In articles and books-the most recent
work is MA Private Choice: Abortion in America in the
Seventies"-he has detailed many of the distortions and
omissions.
MThe pro-life movement,' he says, "fights against a
news blackout of what is good on its side. It fights against
the media propagating everything that can help the other
r j Ma it i a. : a. - i . i
siue. ii ngms against a journalism wmcn euner is lnaiiier
ent or hostile."
I'm troubled by Noonan's charges because for some
time I have had far different perceptions. If anything,
public opinion appears to be turning against the abortion
-il.! . 1 xl 1 - . . . . , .
emic-ana me laws supporting it precisely oecause me
pro-lite message has been getting through as never before.
A major turnaround occurred in March 1975 when
Newsweek ran on its cover a color photograph of a 16-week-old
fetus. Fingers, toes, physical features, and even
blood veins where graphically clear. Previously, this was
the picture that many people found ghastly and repulsive
as it was waved on placards by marching right-to-lifers.
But now it was on Newsweek's cover, .
THE FETUS wasn't a lifelsss tissue after all. The startl
ing photograph, give sudden respectability from an un-
a - J . ...1Ji L.I T J. -i. il ---I- I
really thought that much about abortion. It was a
moment to stop and reflect: Perhaps it isn't so simple an
issue, to be neatly summarized in the slogans of pro
abortionists. If the Newsweek cover was a breakthrough, so also was
a piece a year later in Good Housekeeping. Dr. Bernard
Nathanson wrote "Second thoughts on Abortion from the
Doctor Who Led the Crusade For It." Nathanson was
saying in a mass-circulation magazine what he had written
earlier in the New England Journal of Medicine: "I am
deeply troubled by my own increasing certainity that I
had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths ... We are taking
life, and the deliberate taking of life, even of a special
order and under special circumstances, is an inexpressibely
serious matter."
This, month, Doubleday is publishing' "Aborting
America," Nathanson's account of his years of moral
struggle that has lead him to believe, as Doubleday notes,
that "abortion on request is wrong."
Articles along these same lines by writers re-examining
old positions and exploring new feelings-have been
appearing regularly in the past two or three years.
LINDA BIRD Francke's od-ed column in the New
York Times, which led to her book, "The Ambivalence
of Abortion," was memorable,. Last year's. Chicago Sun
Times' expose on the abortion mills of Chicago was
journalism at its most powerful. In the current issue of
Harper's an essay called "Of Two Minds About. Abortion"
describes abortion foes as anything but fanatics. Instead,
"they conceive of a social and moral order where citizen
ship has duties and passions are held in check." Among
abortion supporters, "what is lacking is any sure sign of
concern over the society we have, and the people we will
be, once their ends are attained."
What's striking about these new media probings is
where the articles appeared: from Good Housekeeping to
the Chicago Sun-Times. In the minds of many in the pro
life movement, these publications are among the media
that are considered the "indifferent and hostile enemy."
t-
" - -
Yet, if any turning around of public opinion is
occurring, and I am convinced it is, then the positive
contributions of the so-called' biased media must be
recognized. After the 1973 decision, the superficial cover
age of the abortion-the facile write-off that this was "a
Catholic issue" or that pro-life officials inflated their
numbers-was less an example of unfair coverage than
coverage that was unknowing. The media were over their
heads amid the moral, social and political complexities,
Incompetence was at work, not bias. .
If this has changed, then the chances are increased that
the abortion debate can be more reasoned and less
strident than what has been the sorry case until now,
(c) 1979, The Washington Port Company
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