CNSNews.com has spent more than a decade falsely implying that federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood pays for abortion, and CNS’ newest reporter, Emily Ward, isn’t about to disturb that record.
So it’s no surprise that Ward wrote in a Jan. 21 article:
Planned Parenthood released its 2017-2018 annual report over the weekend, revealing that the organization did 332,757 abortions in the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2017.
Planned Parenthood also reported that it received $563.8 million in revenue from “government health services reimbursements & grants” for the year ending June 30, 2018.
Ward’s juxtaposition suggests the two are linked. They are not: Federal policy prohibits federal money from paying for abortion.
Ward followed with another attack on Planned Parenthood on Feb. 1, this time over online chatbots offering teens “instant sex and relationship advice.” Ward doesn’t cite any answers provided that were inaccurate or even offensive, though she did seem disturbed that the chatbot offers “no judgment.” Surprisingly, Ward doesn’t even contact the usual right-wing suspects to denounce the dissemination of accurate information; instead, she irrelevantly repeats the number of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood clinics (though, surprisingly, not the amount of federal money it has accepted).
Ward appears to have taken Penny Starr’s place on CNS’ anti-abortion beat, but it’s not translating so far into stories on the subject being more fair and balanced.
UPDATE: Ward pushed the false funding meme again — while also taking an unusual shot at Republicans — in a Jan. 24 article that complained “Planned Parenthood did more than 2 million abortions while receiving federal funding through appropriations approved by the House of Representatives when the House was controlled by Republicans from the beginning of 2011 through the beginning of 2019.” She did not explain that none of those appropriations paid for any of those abortions.