Despite Fox News' claim that its "news" programming is "fair & balanced," it is blatantly obvious that much of its content is agenda driven. When it comes to reproductive rights, Fox News clearly serves the interests of the right wing anti-choice movement which is seeking to role back reproductive rights.  The bias is clear. In covering the HHS birth control mandate, Fox supported the Catholic bishop's opposition to the law. In covering the Gosnell case, Fox tried to equate what happened in Gosnell's clinic to mainstream, legal abortion. In covering the Texas anti-choice legislation, Fox tried to paint the pro-choice opposition as extreme. Last week, Shannon Bream, Fox's principal conduit for anti-choice talking points, reported on Sen. Lindsey Graham's 20 week abortion ban bill. While most of the report was straightforward, Bream presented, as Fox fact, a lie that was straight out of the anti-choice playbook. So much for "fair & balanced."

On America's Newsroom, Bill Hemmer launched the segment with anti-choice agitprop. He invoked the Gosnell case in order to equate it with legal abortion: "That horrifying Kermit Gosnell case is changing the game in the abortion debate." (Uh, no Bill, the Gosnell case has nothing to do with legal abortion. In fact, it demonstrates what will happen if you and your "pro-life" pals get their way and criminalize abortion.) He reported that Sen. Graham is set to introduce "landmark legislation" after 20 weeks of pregnancy." (Oh, ladies, doesn't it make you swoon when a fine Southern bachelor protects us from our nasty lady parts!)

Bream provided more details. No more than 10 seconds went by before her great, big whopper. After reporting that Graham's bill is like many passed in state legislatures (she didn't mention the various court challenges) she stated, as Fox fact, that the bill is "based on scientific evidence that unborn children do feel pain and show that they recoil from pain at 20 weeks."

Bream is lying about the "scientific evidence" because the majority of medical authorities say that fetuses don't feel pain until "well after 20 weeks." But the 20 week pain threshold is now a standard talking point for the anti-choice movement. In their desperation to prove that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks, the anti-choicers even cite doctors whose evidence clearly does not make that conclusion. In non Fox world "most scientists who have expressed views on the issue have said they believe that if fetuses can feel pain, the neurological wiring is not in place until later, after the time when nearly all abortions occur."

But polling data shows that, with a little misinformation, people support the 20 week ban. In other words, the bills are driven by polls and not science which is being twisted to conform to a political agenda - an agenda supported by the "fair & balanced" Fox News.

No wonder Fox viewers are so misinformed.  

And ladies, under Graham's bill, if you discover, late in your pregnancy, that you are carrying a seriously medically compromised fetus which, after birth, would have short and very painful existence, Sen. Graham says too bad, so sad but no abortion for you!