Conservative pundits have long called for the defunding of public broadcasting, not only for fiscal reasons but also due to the undeniable leftist slant of their news coverage in general.
Critics say such bias was on display during a segment of “PBS News Weekend” on Saturday when anchor John Yang introduced a discussion about a network of facilities that exist to provide women an option other than abortion when facing an unexpected pregnancy.
He began with a nod to the preferred rhetoric of transgender activists by dropping any reference to “women” in his discussion of pregnancy.
“Crisis pregnancy centers provide counseling and other prenatal services from an anti-abortion perspective,” he said. “Their supporters say they help ensure that pregnant people know the risks of abortion. Advocates of abortion rights say the information they provide can be misleading or have no scientific basis.”
PBS correspondent Ali Rogin went on to acknowledge that “so-called crisis pregnancy centers are nothing new” in the United States but cited statistics from pro-abortion groups that they received “at least $344 million in government grants” during the 2022 fiscal year. Of course, she did not similarly discuss the federal government’s largesse devoted to abortion providers.
During the 2014 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood alone received $553.7 million in taxpayer-funded repayments and grants.
The Biden admin wants to keep states from using TANF funding to help crisis pregnancy centers.
Our Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act would stop the loon wing of the president’s party from coming after centers that protect life. pic.twitter.com/icwykieUMf
— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) February 23, 2024
Rogin then introduced her guest, reproductive health and justice reporter Carter Sherman, who writes for The Guardian.
She took the denunciation of pro-life pregnancy centers — or “anti-abortion centers,” as she called them — even further by stating that “many of these facilities are not actually medically licensed.”
Although she admitted that these facilities provide assistance in the form of healthcare services and even “goods like car seats and strollers,” she offered a dim view of any clinic that discourages pregnant women, known in PBS parlance as “pregnant people,” from ending the lives of their unborn children.
“Something that has come up again and again, from people who go into these centers, is that they walk in not necessarily knowing that they are not in an abortion clinic,” Sherman complained. “You know, these centers, according to abortion rights supporters, will oftentimes set up shop very close to an abortion clinic, they will have names that include words like birth, or choice, are the sorts of things that we tend to hear from abortion rights supporters. And in reality, again, these are centers that are trying to convince you to continue a pregnancy.”
