Despite Fox's claim that its "news" shows are "fair & balanced," Megyn Kelly's show is frequently nothing more than a conduit for alleged "news" host Kelly to promote right wing talking points and in so doing, mischaracterize the issue at hand. Such was the case, last week, when she and her anti-choice panelists, Monica Crowley and Kirsten Powers, spun the Texas abortion bill to dismiss the bill's impact on abortion access and to use the Gosnell case in order to justify the need for the legislation. Yesterday, alleged news host Martha MacCallum's pro-life panel also downplayed abortion access in order to attack Wendy Davis for her "ghoulish" opposition to the 20 week abortion. Today, Megyn Kelly stayed with the obvious anti-choice Fox script that calls for ignoring other salient parts of the bill while playing up the alleged inhumanity of late term abortions in order to attack Wendy Davis. And in attacking Ms. Davis, Kelly advanced Kirsten Power's dishonest and derogatory claim that Davis supports those nasty bitches who want to abort "healthy" late term fetuses. Oh yeah, and Gosnell was mentioned. It's all so predictable?
After Megyn Kelly said that, with regard to the abortion issue, "good people can have strong differences on this issue," she added "but it is interesting to see this state lawmaker, Wendy Davis, hailed as a heroine." Before letting Leslie Marshall speak, Kelly did a little propaganda homily: "to have her hailed as a heroine when one of the main pieces of the bill she's objecting to is she wants you to be able to abort your baby between weeks 20 and 26 so that that at that point she thinks that you should be able to abort a healthy fetus. They're sucking their thumbs at that point, they're kicking, they're yawning in utero, this is what she feels and a lot of people feel the same." Kelly sneered as she shouted and gesticulated "but to come out as a hero, fighting for that, I don't know." Yowza, in true anti-choice fashion, she humanized the fetus while totally ignoring the reality that late term abortion is very rare and done in cases where the fetus and the mother are medically compromised - but notice how she worked in, as did Powers, "healthy fetus."
Liberal talk show host, Leslie Marshall said that while she doesn't hail Davis as a hero on the late term abortion position, she is being hailed as a hero because she is fighting for women's rights. When she noted that most of the TX legislature are men, Kelly interrupted with a reference to the bill's mandate regarding abortion clinics which "pro-choice people say will narrow a woman's options if she wants to have an abortion and that piece of it may be less controversial but I want to stick with this piece of it because women's rights will still be intact even if they lower the weeks from 26 to 20 in terms of aborting a healthy fetus." Pow, she reinforced the propaganda about how not having a 20 week ban will mean abortions of "healthy" fetuses.
Marshall said that she has a problem with the government intruding into women's health care decisions. When she cited pregnancy complications, Kelly shouted "this bill will preserve this" and told right wing radio host and birther, Chris Plante that the bill has exemptions for life and health. (She is wrong, it has exemptions for life of the mother and fetal abnormality but not health)
Not surprisingly, right wing radio host and Plante, who recently said, on Kelly's show, that "Democrats don't care about "babies who are having their spines snipped all over the country" stuck with the script and talked about "20 weeks, 5 months in, the child is fully formed, it is obviously a human being...it feels pain..." (While the anti-choice movement is pushing the 20 week fetal pain thing, science disagrees.) He claimed that "the rights of the women which I think are being protected at a bare minimum and then there comes the question of the right to life and the right of the child to life once it's fully formed at 20 weeks." Plante, not a doctor, lectured on 20 week fetus activities and that the question is "where you draw the line." He dissed "fallbacks" about "women's health, it's about choice, it's about rights" and claimed that science and the American public are "trending away from the more radical position on pro-choice." Following the script he tied the Texas bill to Gosnell in asking "how far are you willing to go." Kelly referenced Kirsten Power's claim, made yesterday on McCallum's show, that despite predictions, Pennsylvania clinics didn't close after regulations were tightened.
So once again, we have a "fair & balanced" discussion that focuses on anti-choice propaganda regarding viability of the "healthy" fetus. Once again, the host attacked Wendy Davis and women who have late term abortions. Once again, there was no discussion, other than a reference to Power's predictions that regulations on clinics are no big deal, of those regulations. And during the requisite mention of Gosnell, no mention that if women lose access to abortion, there will more Gosnell's. Rather than a discussion on all the ramifications of the bill, the focus was on the horrors of late term abortion and how horrible Wendy Davis is for supporting abortions on "healthy" late term fetuses. Fox News - "Fair & Balanced" as always!
“I’ll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range…. In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective….”
There really is no factual basis to claim that most abortions performed after 20 weeks are for medical reasons.