Birth Control

On World News Sunday, ABC anchor Dan Harris gave attention to the latest example of disrespect that one has come to expect to see aimed at the Catholic Church as he recounted that a British foreign ministry official had made a crack about Pope Benedict opening an abortion clinic or marketing condoms, prompting an apology from the British government. On the April 25 show, Harris relayed the…

Time's Nancy Gibbs celebrated the birth control pill's 50th anniversary in her May 3 cover story by hailing the greater employment opportunities for women that resulted from its wide-spread use. But she failed to explore the downsides of it.  The Pill became widely available in 1960, first to married women who wanted to control their fertility and later, to single women. And though the…

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of…

Petula Dvorark, Washington Post's designated church-basher, commemorated the closure of a Virginian "pro-life" pharmacy with snide glee in her April 13 column. "The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly proudly and purposefully limited what it would stock on its shelves. But it turns out that no birth control pills, no condoms, no porn, no tobacco and even no makeup added up to one thing: No…

Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times addressed a "welcome letter" to the incoming Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez [at right], in a April 7 column which focused almost entirely in forwarding the mainstream media's talking points on the Church sex abuse scandal, and stereotyped the religious community that the bishop is a member of. Lopez wasted little time in delving into the…

[Update, 10:48 pm Eastern: Audio & video clips added.] On Monday's Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips sympathetically interviewed a woman who unapologetically Tweeted her chemically-induced abortion as it happened. Instead of offering the pro-life viewpoint, Phillips lamented how her guest received "e-mails and the responses [which] were so brutal." The anchor later admitted that she "didn't want…

CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference begins Feb. 18. Conservative leaders will rally the troops before the mid-term elections in November and discuss the future role of conservatives in politics. One person who will not be in attendance is Meghan McCain, despite the year-long media attempt to make citizens believe she is somehow representative of conservatives. She…

Rob Stein of The Washington Post rehashed a two-year-old study about teen pregnancy rates on Jan. 26 in order to criticize funding for abstinence programs. Little did he know that he'd have to eat his words just a few days later. On Feb. 2, Stein wrote another abstinence-centered article, but this time with a very different theme. The headline read: "Abstinence only programs might work, study…

Every week Oprah Winfrey encourages over 44 million Americans to "Live Your Best Life" - the mantra of her billion-dollar brand. "The key to realizing a dream," Oprah said in the Sept. 2002 issue of her O magazine, "is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning." Maybe Oprah should revisit that…

When the cable network VH1 planned a news special called "The New Virginity," an abstinence backer might have felt optimistic that teenagers and young adults were going to get a refreshing jolt of publicity about the option of premarital celibacy. That is, unless you looked at the network’s promotional fine print. Words have meanings. So when VH1 promised to explore the "roots of our current…

CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton didn't appear quite so eager this morning to promote contraceptive for teens to parents in the second part of a two-part segment about teens and sex. In fact, to parents, she claimed, "We say medically the longer you wait [to have sex] the better, but again the job of a women's health specialist and adolescent gynecologist is to make sure that we…

Teenagers don't need to ask their friends anymore about sex. Now they can just turn to CBS' medical correspondent, Dr. Jennifer Ashton. On Jan. 6, Dr. Ashton met with a group of teenage girls on CBS' "Early Show" to advertise her new book "The Body Scoop for Girls" - a book that anchor Maggie Rodriguez said "parents of daughters really appreciate." But most parents that watched this segment were…

"About half of the pregnancies in this country are unplanned," reported Richard Besser, ABC's senior Health and Medical Director, on "Good Morning America" Dec. 15.  Talking specifically about teens, Besser said that "even though there's so much information on prevention available - literally at your fingertips - it seems like it's not always getting through." So, to help parents initiate the "…

CNN’s Jack Cafferty all but endorsed a global version of China’s oppressive one-child policy on Friday’s Situation Room. He repeated the argument of Canadian journalist Diane Francis, that population control is the only way to fight global warming, and mentioned the opposition of “fundamentalist leaders” and others only in passing. All but one of the viewer e-mails that Cafferty read endorsed the…