NBC Reporter Fabricates ‘Fringe’ GOP Abortion Bill to Criticize, Knocks Republicans for Resolution Condemning Violence Against Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers
NBC’s Ali Vitali invented a fictious GOP abortion bill to criticize earlier this week, arguing that Republicans were “starting sort of at the fringe side of the abortion conversation,” by passing the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act on Wednesday.
But Vitali’s description of the bill bore no resemblance to the language inside of it.
According to Vitali, “really what they’re [Republicans] talking about is fetuses who are viable after a period of gestation. So really 21-24 weeks and after that, and at the center of this conversation is that that’s around 1 percent of abortions in this country.”
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act does nothing to bar abortions after any period of gestation, though, be it after 21, 24, or even 39 weeks in the womb. The numbers cited by Vitali appear to have been picked out of a hat, not out of the text of the legislation.
What the bill actually does is require health care providers to provide medical care to fetuses who are born alive during the performance of an attempted abortion procedure, regardless of gestational age. Here’s the operative part of the legislation:
Any health care practitioner present at the time the child is born alive shall (A) exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age; and (B) following the exercise of skill, care, and diligence required under subparagraph (A), ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.
That’s not a fringe position, it’s one that in all likelihood, a majority of Americans support. Polling around abortion is extremely difficult to make definitive statements about and the results often depend on the framing of the question. According to Pew Research, though, Americans are deeply divided on the question of whether abortions should be allowed after 14 weeks gestation and by a large majority oppose abortions performed after 24 weeks gestation. It’s difficult to imagine much opposition to the treatment of children who have already been born.
Just prior to butchering her description of the bill, Vitali also took the time to chide Republicans for “seeking to protect crisis pregnancy centers which are notorious for disinformation about abortion and pregnancy.”
Put aside how absurd it is to broadly castigate the many different organizations providing assistance to women as being “notorious for disinformation” solely because of their pro-life beliefs, Vitali is pillorying the House GOP for a resolution with no enforcement mechanism behind it. Its only effect is to condemn the hundreds of acts of political violence performed against pro-life organizations since the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, including the firebombing of facilities in New York and Oregon.
Considering how the Biden administration has zealously enforced the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against pro-life protesters accused of far less, this resolution merely calls on the federal government to do its job in these much more extreme cases from the opposite partisan side.
Vitali’s reporting was not only slanted, but bungled, and MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace’s reaction was to declare that “this is why Ali is so good at her job.”
Well, that just depends on what she thinks her job is.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
