{"id":16883,"date":"2012-05-22T10:57:04","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T14:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=16883"},"modified":"2013-04-03T02:17:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T06:17:25","slug":"wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/","title":{"rendered":"WaPo’s softball interview with late-term abortionist Willie Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"\"<\/a>When you cover abortion-related news and opinion for a living, you\u2019re routinely exposed to some pretty<\/a> twisted<\/a> reasoning<\/a>. Some of the worst naturally comes from abortionists, particularly late-term abortionists. On Monday, the Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Sarah Kliff interviewed<\/a> Dr. Willie Parker, a Washington obstetrician who \u201cstands to be directly affected\u201d by the late-term abortion ban Congress is currently considering for the District of Columbia:<\/p>\n

The reality is that a small percentage of overall women who have abortions have them beyond 13 weeks. It\u2019s about 1\u00a0percent. Those cases do happen in D.C. like they happen everywhere else. There are unplanned pregnancies, people who are in poverty who might delay their diagnosis and might end up in this group of people. Those are the women who could be affected.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The implication is a recurring pro-abortion two-step: so few abortions are performed after viability that it\u2019s not worth getting angry about, yet enough women need to abort that late in their pregnancy that banning it is<\/em> worth getting angry about. Er, okay.<\/p>\n

The reality is that unplanned, unwanted or wanted but flawed pregnancies can occur to all women of any race, class or economic status. The women who tend to disproportionately find themselves [having a later-term abortion] tend to be at the extremes of reproductive age, maybe women over 40 who are more likely to have genetic anomalies. There are also women in poverty, with limited access to medical resources or education.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Presumably, a doctor knows enough about human reproduction to know that pregnancies don\u2019t just \u201coccur to\u201d unsuspecting victims. How many poverty-stricken women\u2019s educations are really that deficient?<\/p>\n

SK:<\/strong> What do you make of this wave of late-term restrictions, and what do they mean for women?<\/p>\n

WP: <\/strong>It\u2019s a gambit around public opinion. Because of the later stage of development, these are people who are banking on blurring lines around viability. I think it\u2019s a very calculated strategy that fails to take into account the complexity of these cases. I think it\u2019s also unfortunate because it vilifies the women who might need an abortion the most.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blurring? Pro-lifers are trying to do just the opposite: give the public a clearer<\/em> understanding of when babies can feel pain and survive outside the womb. It\u2019s abortionists who depend on blurring lines and obscuring complexity, as we\u2019ll see below. And it can\u2019t be repeated enough that it\u2019s not \u201cvilifying\u201d women to tell the truth about abortion. Indeed, our hearts break for women who are deceived by the very medical professionals whose counsel they\u2019re supposed to be able to trust.<\/p>\n

These laws put providers in a position where they have to turn away patients who have great need. I also think they \u00adcreate this impression that abortion providers are callous and allow people to conflate murder and abortion. People feel morally justified to say \u201cthis is wrong\u201d because they\u2019re led to think it\u2019s close to murder. I think that jeopardizes us, by conflating abortion with an issue that would cause moral outrage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm\u2026now where would people get the idea that abortion providers are callous? Maybe it has something to do with the way they kill babies for a living while pretending that describing their work as such is a mere \u201cconflation\u201d?<\/p>\n

Remember that, aside from being biologically literate enough to know that the unborn are alive<\/a> from the very beginning of pregnancy, a late-term abortionist in particular is presumably aware that the baby he kills is developed enough to have recognizable features<\/a>; a heartbeat; a fully formed brain; the ability to feel pain; the ability to recognize sounds<\/a>, including his or her mother’s voice; and in some cases the ability to survive outside the womb. In other words, these babies have everything that Planned Parenthood tells girls their babies don’t have<\/a> – a lack which allegedly justifies their destruction.<\/p>\n

Despite a throwaway reference to having thought about \u201cthe moral complexities\u201d of abortion earlier in his career, it\u2019s clear that Dr. Parker couldn\u2019t care less about his unborn patients. He gives all weight to the mother\u2019s claims but none whatsoever to the child\u2019s. And Kliff doesn\u2019t even try to question him about it. The whole interview is one softball after another, framing Parker as some kindly servant of women\u2019s health heroically risking his life for the cause.<\/p>\n

Just imagine how illuminating the Post<\/em>\u2019s piece could have been if he were confronted on the humanity of Parker’s victims, the dangerous medical advice<\/a> and lawbreaking advocacy<\/a> peddled by some of his colleagues, or how much dough he makes for his \u201cservice.\u201d Too bad that would require America\u2019s major newspapers to be staffed with journalists, not partisans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalists turned partisans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":14828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWaPo's softball interview with late-term abortionist Willie Parker - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WaPo's softball interview with late-term abortionist Willie Parker - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Journalists turned partisans.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-22T14:57:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-04-03T06:17:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/abortionist.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"450\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"301\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Calvin Freiburger\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6eb2bf94c8064b71953ba137bf413c4d\"},\"headline\":\"WaPo’s softball interview with late-term abortionist Willie Parker\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-22T14:57:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-04-03T06:17:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\"},\"wordCount\":798,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Media\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wapos-softball-interview-abortionist-willie-parker\/\",\"name\":\"WaPo's softball interview with late-term abortionist Willie Parker - 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Calvin is an editor and administrator for TheFederalistPapers.org, and his work has appeared on NewsRealBlog.com, PatriotUpdate.com, LifeNews.com, LifeSiteNews.com, RightWisconsin.com, AmericanThinker.com, Stream.org, AmericanClarion.org, and more. Please check out his official website, ConservativeStandards.com. 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