The Media Must Stop Both Sides-ing the Criminalization of Pregnancy
I was stunned by what I read in my local newspaper just before Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect May 1. In its zeal to both-sides a ban that will criminalize medical providers, abortion seekers, and people who experience miscarriages and other pregnancy complications, the South Florida Sun Sentinel published an opinion piece full of biased language, propaganda, and disinformation.
The Sun Sentinel featured two side-by-side commentaries addressing the near-total abortion ban and Amendment 4, the Florida ballot measure that, if approved by 60 percent of voters in November, will enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.
The first piece, “Protect Your Rights: Vote Yes on Amendment 4,” was written by Danielle Tallafuss, a Central Florida mother of three who received abortion care in 2020, after terrible news following a pregnancy scan at 20 weeks and 6 days. Doctors told Tallafuss her son might have a condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. If she saw the pregnancy to term, her son would require three open heart surgeries and the rest of his organs could shut down due to the strain.
Even before the bans and the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Tallafuss had to travel to a different city in Florida to get the care she needed because the restrictions on later abortion limit providers. In her heartfelt account, Tallafuss writes about her privilege in getting care at all:
My abortion wasn’t about politics; it was about what was right for my family. It was a decision we made out of love, compassion and doing what was best, not just for the son we already had at home, but for Nathaniel, who would have had to suffer through treatments that most adults wouldn’t be able to handle before he could even take his first steps.
Next to this moving testimonial, the Sun Sentinel published an opinion piece written by a professional anti-abortion crusader, Kimberly Bird, who makes factually inaccurate claims and uses incendiary language with zero pushback from my local newspaper.
Bird works at Live Action, the extremist anti-abortion group that has targeted Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. Its founder and president, Lila Rose, has compared abortion to slavery, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide. Yet in its blurb on Bird’s commentary, the Sun Sentinel describes Live Action as “a national human rights nonprofit.”
In her piece, “Save Lives: Vote No on Amendment 4,” Bird argues that the Florida Supreme Court “took the weight of abortion off their shoulders and placed it on the backs of voters,” framing a democratic vote to restore Floridians’ right to make one of the most important, personal decisions that an individual can make as a burden.
Reproductive freedom is not a burden—it is an inherent right all people must have. Women do not need to be saved from themselves, as Bird implies. Women and all pregnant people are perfectly capable of understanding the ballot initiative, and we are eager to vote to restore abortion rights in Florida.
In recent polls, around 60 percent of Floridians say they support expanding abortion access. We don’t want to be criminalized or see our friends and family criminalized for ending a pregnancy.
Bird goes on to make a series of statements that have no basis in fact, including: “The science is clear: life begins at fertilization,” and “after just 22 days, a preborn child’s heart will begin to beat.” The science is clear—an embryo does not have a heart. These are electrical impulses that denote cardiac activity during an ultrasound. If you put two heart cells in a petri dish, they will appear to “beat.” Does a petri dish have a heart?
As proof of her claims that “the science is clear,” she cites a thinly veiled propaganda blog called the Endowment for Human Development. If she had any shame, she would be embarrassed. Publishing this tripe is certainly an embarrassment to the Sun Sentinel and anyone associated with the newspaper.
Further, the piece calls medical providers “abortionists” who perform procedures that “violently and brutally kill that child.” Bird describes safe and effective medication abortion care as a “chemical abortion” and mixes up a dilation and evacuation with a dilation and curettage while writing that the procedure is to “dismember the child.”
We cannot allow the media to continue to platform extreme anti-abortion narratives and give them the same weight as the voices of medical providers and people who have actually had abortions. In recent polls, around 60 percent of Floridians say they support expanding abortion access. We don’t want to be criminalized or see our friends and family criminalized for ending a pregnancy.
On May 1, the anti-abortion movement accomplished something it has been working toward for decades. Thanks to the Republican supermajority in the state legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who packed the Florida Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges and signed this harmful bill into law, abortion care is now banned after six weeks, before many people even realize they are pregnant.
This ban is devastating not just for Floridians, but for people in states like Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, who used to turn to Florida as the only Southern state where they could get abortion care, even if only up to 15 weeks. Despite all the baseless barriers and harmful laws, people can still get safe abortions by traveling to places like Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., Colorado, and most of the Northeast for in-clinic care (if they can afford to), or by ordering safe and effective abortion pills from medical providers in other states through websites like INeedAnA.com and PlanCPills.com.
On November 5, Floridians will have the chance to vote to restore our abortion rights through the point of viability so we can continue to fight for full reproductive freedom at all stages of pregnancy. In the meantime, Florida newspapers, broadcasters, and other media must uphold basic journalistic standards and fact-check the content they are disseminating. Platforming extremists who spread disinformation is a disservice to the communities the Sun Sentinel claims to serve in its self-stated mission to “deliver the truth every day.”
