… [A] number of news organizations no longer use pro-life or pro-choice, the latest being National Public Radio. The thought here is that the word pro-life is fooling people.
… [I]sn’t it just a wee condescending to suggest, after more than a generation of contentious moral and political debate, that the American people really haven’t figured out what pro-life and pro-choice mean?
Americans have done so, moreover, without a great deal of help from the press. In news reporting, it’s not unusual to encounter constructions such as this AP dispatch from the presidential campaign about Sarah Palin: “She has worshipped at a nondenominational Bible church since 2002, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and supports classroom discussions about creationism.”
That’s fair as far as it goes. Just once, however, wouldn’t it be interesting to see a leading newspaper write something like, “Nancy Pelosi, who opposes any restrictions on abortion, even in cases where a pregnant minor is taken across state lines without a parent’s permission or where the fetus is halfway out the mother“?
~William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal opinion column, June 1