New York Times Bites Off More Than It Can Skew
Fake news is alive and well — and thriving on the pages of America’s biggest newspapers. No wonder more people are tuning out the media. They don’t trust it. And outlets like The New York Times aren’t giving them any reason to try.
Fake news is alive and well — and thriving on the pages of America’s biggest newspapers. No wonder more people are tuning out the media. They don’t trust it. And outlets like The New York Times aren’t giving them any reason to try.
At some point, the Times’ editorial board must have gotten together and decided to reprint every lie ever told about abstinence education. The result was Saturday’s work of fiction, a breathtakingly dishonest, 602-word crime scene of journalism that justifies America’s growing distrust of the press. About the only thing that was accurate about the column was its placement: on the opinion page, where it can’t be passed off as legitimate news.
Still, the editors’ agenda was obvious — discrediting a sex-ed approach that’s popular, effective, and grossly underfunded. They barely got the byline in before the absurdities began, starting with the Times’ insistence that HHS is somehow “advancing an anti-science, ideological agenda” by trying to level the funding field for abstinence. “The department last year prematurely ended grants to some teen pregnancy prevention programs, claiming weak evidence of success. More recently, it set new funding rules that favor an abstinence-only approach,” they complain.
If anyone’s ignoring science, it’s the Times. Barack Obama’s own HHS admitted outright that his contraception-first strategy was a billion-dollar failure. More than 80 percent of the students in his programs fared either worse or no better than their peers. Hardly the stuff of “weak evidence.” According to the last administration, Obama’s approach was a disaster — resulting in more pregnancies, more sexual initiation, and more oral sex.
Not surprisingly, the Trump administration doesn’t think programs that encourage pregnancy are the wisest use of federal funds. So it rewrote the rules, shifting a very modest amount of money (10 cents of every sex-ed dollar) to the strategy the CDC agrees is working. But even now, HHS’s investment in abstinence isn’t close to what the Times’ preferred programs are getting. Liberal sex ed still rakes in about $980 million, compared to $100 million for sexual risk avoidance (SRA). Even with the president’s changes, that’s still about a 10:1 ratio in favor of programs that taxpayers don’t want — and, more importantly, don’t work!
The editors claim that “The administration’s approach defies all common sense. There is no good evidence that abstinence-only education prevents or delays young people from having sex, leads them to have fewer sexual partners, or reduces rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.” Did the Times fire all of its fact-checkers? The CDC blew that myth to bits in 2016, explaining that not only does the abstinence message work, it positively affects every area of kids’ lives. “High school students who are virgins rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually active peers.” That includes everything from “bike helmet and seat belt use to substance abuse, diet, doctor’s visits, exercise, and even tanning bed use.” Abstinence education is like one-stop shopping for healthier behavior.
Unfortunately, the Left is too beholden to its culture of permissiveness to listen. For some leftists, it’s self-indulgence at all costs — so much so that they’re willing to help kids off a cliff that leads to teen pregnancy and everything that comes with it: financial hardship, school failure, and depression. They refuse to treat sex like every other risk behavior and discourage it. And ironically, that’s what teenagers want.
In a survey of 18- and 19-year-olds, the Barna Group found that what kids care about is learning how to “understand healthy and unhealthy relationships (65 percent), avoiding sexual assault (64 percent), how alcohol impairs judgment (61 percent), and how to say ‘no’ to sex without losing a relationship (57 percent).” They’re relationship-driven, not sex obsessed. Most of them agree that today’s curriculum pressures them too much to have sex. And those who’ve given in regret it. They don’t think lessons on sexual pleasuring (26 percent) are nearly as important as having the skills to say “no” (63 percent).
That’s another thing the editors misjudge: teenagers’ desire to wait. “[G]iven that almost all Americans engage in premarital sex,” they argue, “this vision of an abstinent-outside-of-marriage world simply at odds with reality.” That’s ridiculous. All Americans don’t engage in premarital sex — and certainly all teenagers don’t. Even The Washington Post points out just how sharply teen sex is declining. Would you believe that about 60 percent of teens haven’t had sex? Most Americans are surprised to hear it — thanks in part to the misinformation campaigns of newspapers like this one. Once they know, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between agree: It’s time to teach abstinence.
And the Trump administration is listening. It’s pursuing a bipartisan, evidence-based approach — which is more than I can say for The New York Times.
Originally published here.
The Victims of Rho
For Robert Rho, destroying tiny lives was all in a day’s work. He performed so many abortions, more than 40,000, that one more death probably seemed insignificant — until 2016, when that death was one of his 30-year-old patients.
Jaime Morales was six months pregnant when she went to Rho’s office in Queens. It turned out to be the last time she would go anywhere. In snuffing out the life of her perfectly viable baby, the New York doctor managed to sever Jaime’s uterine aorta, rip her cervix, and pierce her uterine wall. Rho knew she was in danger. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop, he had to perform another procedure. It didn’t work, but after she collapsed in the bathroom, Rho sent her home anyway — refusing to call an ambulance.
In the car, Jaime slipped into unconsciousness — and by the time her sister reached 911 and got her to a hospital, it was too late. The young mother died. Now, two years later, Rho is in court, where he should have faced 15 years for manslaughter. But just as the jury was about to weigh in with its verdict, the attorney reached a plea deal with prosecutors that will let Rho off with just months in prison — a victory his lawyers call “monumental.”
For the Morales family, who lost so much on that awful July day, Rho’s actions were no “accident.” It was negligence of the worst kind — the sort of criminal callousness that’s taken hold in abortion centers across the country. Assistant District Attorney Brad Leventhal argued that this whole case went beyond malpractice. “It’s about greed and arrogance.” Jaime Lee Morales, he told the jury, “bled to death because this defendant did nothing.”
Unfortunately, Rho is just the symbol of a broader abortion movement that cares more about making a profit than providing for the well-being of women. His Liberty Women’s Health of Queens office is closed, but hundreds of other abortion offices are still open and operating without the barest of concerns for mothers’ health. Planned Parenthood has spent millions of dollars fighting commonsense standards and safety regulations that would help keep women like Jaime Morales alive. To its dismay, even states with some of the bluest roots stand behind sensible measures like abortion waiting periods, fetal pain bills, hospital admitting privileges, mandatory ultrasounds, licensed staff requirements and, in a minor’s case, getting a parent’s okay.
For an industry supposedly predicated on “women’s health,” you’d think the clinics would be supportive. Think again. These businesses would rather make money than spend any on state-of-the-art care for mothers. Instead of giving women the cutting-edge care they claim to, groups like Planned Parenthood want to subject mothers to clinics with looser regulations than a public pool. No wonder taxpayers are desperate to defund them!
Originally published here.
Vatican: No Deal for Saudi Christians
It sounded too good to be true, and maybe it was. After our story last week about the Saudi government striking a deal to build Christian churches, the Vatican is denying that any agreement was made. Reports of the historic pact started in the Egyptian press and soon spread to the West, but church officials now say they’re untrue.
Cardinal Tauren did meet with the Saudi royal family and made his case for treating religious minorities equally. And while Western leaders have been trying to break through on this issue, more work will need to be done.
It seemed plausible, given my own meetings in Egypt and the moderate tone that el Sisi and his administration had taken, that momentum was building for more religious liberty in the area. Hopefully the news was just premature and an agreement to let Christians worship freely in Saudi Arabia will someday be reality. Until then, we continue to pray for people like Nawal, who long to live out their faith openly. If you’d like to help minister to her or others, visit Open Doors USA for ways you can get involved.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
