As bad as the Stupak Amendment is, it is quickly becoming clear that major media distortions of the impact of the Amendment are part of the problem. As Jodi Jacobson notes on RHRealityCheck,
An article by Kathleen Seelye in today’s New York Times titled “In Congress, a Predicament for Abortion Supporters,” can now be added to the growing list of media analyses that fail to accurately portray the implications of the Stupak amendment should it become law.
In addition as Kelli Garcia of the National Women’s Law Center points out, a recent column by EJ Dionne i the Washington Post also gets it disturbingly wrong,
The Stupak Amendment is not, as Dionne argues, a compromise or a minor change to the status quo. As NWLC Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights Judy Waxman detailed in an earlier post, the Stupak Amendment will greatly limit women’s access to abortion coverage and will deny many women the ability to purchase such coverage using their own money.
Clearly, getting the impact of this amendment fully and truthfully understood, let alone fighting it, is going to be an uphill battle and it really points to the urgent importance of supporting women’s advocacy groups and independent women’s media. I urge you strongly to make RH Reality Check and the National Women’s Law Center’s Women’s Stake websites a regular part of your news gathering. Share the links, make sure your friends know what is truly at stake.
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