Award-winning journalist Eyal Press tells the Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan that he believes the mainstream media bears a good deal of blame for the disastrous state of politics related to reproductive rights in the United States.
With the United States Supreme Court appearing likely to overturn decades of judicial precedence by throwing out Roe v. Wade, Press argues that too many journalists have brought us to this point by going along with framing used by anti-abortion activists.
“One of the great successes of the antiabortion movement was to stigmatize a very common medical procedure, and to put people who defend abortion rights on the defensive," he tells Sullivan.
The most common example is the term "pro-life" to describe the movement, as he says this makes it hard for any opponent to raise objections without being seen as "anti-life."
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Similarly, he chides the media for doctors who perform the procedure as "abortion doctors," as such operations are only a small portion of the types of health care they provide to women.
Additionally, he says the media has been far too gentle on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who this week professed shock that multiple Supreme Court justices she voted to support would sign off on such a radical ruling.
“If you are an elected official who claims to care about this right, you need to do better than to tell your constituents that you were given an assurance,” he explains to Sullivan. “The betrayal is what she did."
Read the whole interview here.
