Tonight, I’m giving a speech about the anti-abortion movement’s war on language. It’s something I’ve been writing about for months, and—as you all know—an issue I’m a tad bit obsessed with. I’ll be talking about how conservatives are trying to change accurate medical terms, the way they’re inserting anti-choice rhetoric into legislation, and how they’ve been working overtime to do away with the word ‘ban’.
So you can imagine what it felt like when I was waiting for my train at Penn Station this morning and Grace texted me this piece from The Washington Post:
Fifteen-week limit. LIMIT. When the piece does mention ban—in both the headline and the body of the article—it’s in scare quotes.
Remember: it was just a few months ago that I warned how the anti-abortion movement was launching a campaign to get journalists to stop using ‘ban.’ And it was just last week that The New York Times fell for it, reporting that Republicans are increasingly coming out to oppose a national ban. (They’re not. At all. They’re just using terms like ‘reasonable restrictions’ instead.)
The WaPo piece today is about something Abortion, Every Day has been covering for weeks: how the anti-abortion movement is using Virginia as a test case for their move to do away with ‘ban’. Powerful anti-abortion groups are on the ground there advising Republicans, and the GOP candidates are running ads claiming that their bans aren’t bans. They’re even calling Democrats liars for even suggesting such a thing!
Now, the GOP is right to be afraid. Voters overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans and are making it known in every election they can. Because Republicans aren’t willing to change their actual policies, they figure they’ll just try to convince Americans that their laws aren’t actually anti-abortion at all.
When North Carolina passed a 12-week ban, for example, Republicans called it ‘compromise’ legislation. The legislator who sponsored the ban even said it was “a pro-life plan, not an abortion ban.” My column on that here:
In fact, the GOP is so desperate for voters to believe that they’re not passing bans that they’ve started to use pro-choice language—framing their legislation as a “proposal to keep abortion legal.”
I don’t need to tell you why it’s so dangerous for mainstream media outlets to adopt language like this—or even to frame Republicans’ claims about ‘ban’ as something up for debate.
When WaPo reporter Michael Scherer responded to my angry Twitter thread today, for example, he defended his article as simply “doing the work” reporting on the Virginia GOP’s efforts to do away with ‘ban’:
“We explain the anti-abortion effort you reference, and quote a Youngkin ad making the case. And we explain the Democratic pushback. That is not a concession".”
But as I responded to Scherer, there’s a big difference between reporting on a lie and framing the lie as a reasonable position. What’s even worse—adopting the language of that lie! It’s silly to claim you’re being objective when you run a piece that puts ‘ban’ in scare quotes, but ‘limit’ isn’t.
As I’ve written before, this is the danger of ‘both sides’ journalism. Right now, under conservatives’ definition of ‘ban’, there is no such thing as an abortion ban in America. That’s right, not even in Texas or Tennessee. Is that the position we can expect to see from mainstream publications? I sure hope not.
There is a truth here; that’s what needs reporting.
It must be a hell hole for girls and women living in a state that BANS abortions. After you vote against all Republicans in the next election, if republicans win, you should try your hardest to move to a state that has a constitutional amendment to protect women's right to make her own decisions. Why would anyone let her daughter attend a college in a red state? That is really playing with fire.
Recently reupped my WaPo subscription, but now rethinking that decision. Good for you, Jessica, for calling out Michael Scherer!