Erie News Now over the weekend published a disappointing report on a pro-abortion protest that took place in Perry Square last Friday.
The report included patently false information about Pennsylvania House Bill 118. The report is also a pretty good example of one-sided reporting in general, but that is a discussion for another day.
HR 118 (1) ensures parents the option of arranging burial or cremation for their deceased unborn child and (2) ensures that a medical facility will not dispose of the remains in an undignified way. Abortion facilities, for instance, have been known to dump unborn children in a garbage dumpster, where the remains might even be desecrated by cats, dogs, or birds.
HB 118 does NOT require a death certificate for a miscarried child or an aborted child. Nevertheless, that is what Erie News Now falsely reported.
Getting the facts wrong is bad enough. But the worst part is that the reporter spoke at length with Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Legislative Director Maria Gallagher before the report was published. Maria had explained that the rumor about death certificates is categorically false.
An intelligent reading of the
brief bill confirms that the death certificate story is a lie. It is a lie being circulated by the abortion industry and fellow travelers, by pro-abortion politicians in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and by some in the news media.
The death certificate claim is clearly meritless and should not have been included in the report, period. At the very least, the reporter should have acknowledged that the claim was flatly contradicted by the pro-life side of the discussion.
ACTON REQUEST
Please contact Erie News Now and tell them you don't appreciate being misinformed like this.
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For the record, another deceptive pro-abortion talking point repeated in the report as fact is that HB 1500 would "prevent" a pregnant mom from obtaining an abortion if her baby has Down syndrome.
Unfortunately, the bill does not "prevent" the abortion-killing of any child, including a child with the Down syndrome disability. No one is required to give any reason at all when they demand an abortion. What this bill does attempt to do, by disallowing a determination of Down syndrome as the specific reason for the abortion, is to prevent DEATH from becoming the default "cure" for this relatively common congenital imperfection. Doctors and other medical personnel would be much less likely to say to a confused and frightened mother and father: "It has Down syndrome. When do you want to have the abortion?"
As a final observation: The pro-abortion protest seems to have been rather tiny. Had we known about it in advance, it would have been interesting to see how Erie News Now would have reacted to 100 or 150 pro-life advocates staging a truly grassroots counter demonstration. We've done it before. Maybe that is why the pro-aborts apparently did not announce their plans in advance.
Picture: A baby's hands seven weeks after conception
