NY Times Dodges ‘Abortion’ Term, Hails ‘Health Care’ Provider Planned Parenthood

Dr. Leana Wen, Pres. Planned Parenthood
By Hotchocolita via Wikimedia Commons

By Clay Waters
National Right to Life

The New York Times again provided favorable, euphemistic coverage to the nation’s largest abortion provider (er, “health care” provider), while finding ideology only among its enemies. Reporter Kate Zernike introduced Planned Parenthood’s new leader Dr. Leana Wen, who replaces Cecile Richards.

Planned Parenthood, under fire from conservatives in Washington and state capitols, chose Leana Wen, an emergency room doctor whose family fled China when she was a child, as its next president Wednesday, picking a woman who won praise for her steadying hand as Baltimore’s health commissioner during the city’s convulsive protests in 2015.

Zernike pushed hard on Wen’s inspiring personal story before her euphemistic defense of the group (while avoiding the A-word).

Dr. Wen, 35, grew up poor in Compton, Calif., after her family left China following the Tiananmen Square massacre just before her eighth birthday….

She has also pushed back aggressively on the Trump administration’s cuts to health care. She will take over Planned Parenthood’s leadership at a particularly fraught time. While Americans overwhelmingly support the organization, its Republican critics are pushing to cut its funding and eviscerate or overturn Roe v. Wade, and the Supreme Court is poised to tilt further right as critical cases on women’s health advance through the courts.

Notice how Zernike managed to write the above paragraph without using the word “abortion.”

Earlier this year, Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting teen pregnancy prevention funds, which resulted in a federal judge ordering $5 million in grant funding to be restored to two of the city’s programs. She fought to preserve Title X funding for the city’s health clinics for low-income women, and is leading a lawsuit that accuses the administration of intentionally and unlawfully sabotaging the Affordable Care Act.

People involved in the search said that the selection of Dr. Wen — she is the sixth president and only the second doctor in the organization’s 102-year history to serve in the role — was intended to underscore that Planned Parenthood is an organization providing health care to nearly 2.5 million mostly poor patients as well as an advocacy group.

Zernike managed to avoid the word “abortion” until paragraph eight, the only mention in the story, even though providing abortion is the meaning of Planned Parenthood’s existence.

National Right to Life article continues here