Reuters Won't Talk About Unborn Babies, But They're Glad to Talk About 'Unborn' Baby Pigs
Establishment media reporters, broadly speaking, don’t seem to have much empathy for the lives of the millions of children who are killed each year during abortion procures worldwide.
But, do they care more about piglets than human children?
It would seem an oversimplification of the issue to ask that weighted question in such a simple form.
Most people, confronted with the issue, would likely bemoan the loss of an innocent human child more than they would that of a piglet.
But the establishment media isn’t asking people to choose a side in such a moral dilemma. Their agenda is to craft words, and sentences and narratives that will further normalize the killing of unborn children and to desensitize those who might have some moral objection to that practice.
The left routinely waters down strong language and cutting terms in order to make the cruelty of their policies seem a bit more friendly.
That generally means soft-pedaling the carnage that has resulted from the regime of legalized abortion in the U.S., but sometimes news developments put the left’s callousness about the dignity of human life on full display.
In an April 27 story about an Illinois farmer making the difficult decision to abort 7,500 piglets due to meat processing plant closures related to the coronavirus, Reuters awarded more dignity to dead pigs than it does to human beings.
Reporters Tom Polansek and P.J. Huffstutter used terminology about the animals that is rarely afforded to babies still in the womb.
“With the pandemic hobbling the meat-packing industry, Iowa farmer Al Van Beek had nowhere to ship his full-grown pigs to make room for the 7,500 piglets he expected from his breeding operation,” Reuters reported.
“The crisis forced a decision that still troubles him: He ordered his employees to give injections to the pregnant sows, one by one, that would cause them to abort their baby pigs.”
The report was headlined, “Piglets aborted, chickens gassed as pandemic slams meat sector.”
Now, take a look at how Reuters covered the news that anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, who exposed Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of the organs of unborn children in undercover videos, was facing a court injunction in 2016.
“A U.S. judge on Friday granted a preliminary injunction stopping the distribution of surreptitious videos taken by anti-abortion activists who alleged Planned Parenthood staff discussed the illegal sale of aborted fetal tissue,” Reuters reported.
Notice the language the wire service used.
The unborn children were little more than “aborted fetal tissue” fit to be bought and sold.
Aborted pigs, meanwhile, are called “baby pigs” and “piglets.”
This isn’t an accident.
As was noted on Twitter by the anti-abortion group Live Action, Reuters strictly prohibits its writers from humanizing unborn children.
“@Reuters prides itself in its supposed ‘Freedom from Bias.’ Yet the company forbids journalists from acknowledging the humanity or victimhood of human children targeted for abortion,” Live Action wrote.
.@Reuters prides itself in its supposed “Freedom from Bias.”
Yet the company forbids journalists from acknowledging the humanity or victimhood of human children targeted for abortion.
& fetal pigs are “baby pigs,” “piglets” and “victims.” https://t.co/Ny5dlOas1X
— Live Action (@LiveAction) April 28, 2020
On the Live Action website, an article used Reuters’ own handbook to make its argument.
The wire service handbook outlines how its reporters must describe all things relating to abortion.
“Unless quoting someone, refer to aborted foetuses rather than unborn babies. Describe those campaigning for a woman’s right to have an abortion as ‘abortion rights campaigners’ and those campaigning against abortion rights as ‘anti-abortion campaigners.’ Terms such as pro-choice, pro-life and pro-abortion are open to dispute and should be avoided. Avoid abortionist, which connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions,” the Reuters handbook states.
Look at the language in the handbook and compare it with the extent to which Polansek and Huffstutter appeared to disregard their company’s directive when reporting the deaths of animals.
It’s awful that piglets are being aborted as the country’s livestock industry struggles with logistics issues.
However, it is a mockery of all human life for Reuters’ editors and reporters to attempt to elicit emotion from readers when applying language which mourns the deaths of unborn animals — when defenseless human beings are treated as little more than footnotes for a story.
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