An Oct. 23 CNSNews.com article by Karen Schuberg — which claims that “Abortion kills more black Americans than the seven leading causes of death combined” — is a highly biased affair.
Most notably, conservative anti-abortion activists are not identified as such. While Rev. Clenard H. Childress Jr.’s identification as “founder of BlackGenocide.org” is arguably self-explanatory, Schuberg identifies Freda Bush only as “an obstetrician and gynecologist in private practice in Jackson, Miss.” In fact, Bush is affiliated with the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which is a conservative group that argues for abstinence-only sex education, even to the point of arguing against condom use as ineffective against sexually transmitted diseases even though, as Slate reports, teaching people to protect themselves by using condoms can successfully reduce the spread of disease.
Only one person on the conservative side quoted by Schuberg, “Dr. Alveda King, niece of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” is labeled as a “pro-life activist.” In fact, as we’ve noted the last time CNS granted Alveda King the “Dr.” honorific, her doctorate is not in medicine and appears to be merely honorary.
By contrast, Schuberg cites only one source on the pro-choice side, from the Guttmacher Institute, which she describes as “a pro-abortion group.” And the Guttmacher Institute was not permitted to respond to the more inflammatory claims the anti-abortion activists made, such as King’s assertion that “abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of” and Bush’s reference to Margaret Sanger being “a known eugenist, also had a Negro project” (without explaining that the Guttmacher Institute is an outgrowth of Planned Parenthood, which was founded by Sanger).
CNS has a long history of labeling bias and unbalanced reporting on abortion.