The national section of today's New York Times carries a series of quotes from Senator Ashcroft under the headline "Ashcroft on the Issues." Under the subheading "On Abortion," the Times carries the following quote from Mr. Ashcroft, which the Times attributes to the St. Louis "Post Dispatch" of April 30, 1999: "The American people and a substantial majority of their elected representatives in Congress want to eliminate this gruesome procedure from our nation's hospitals and clinics. This procedure is never necessary to save the life and preserve the health of the unborn child's mother. No issue cuts to the core of our values as a people like the issue of abortion."
Go look at the April 30, 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch article (The Times omits the hyphen in the newspaper's name), and it becomes clear immediately that Mr. Ashcroft wasn't talking about abortion in general, but about a relatively rare and, indeed, gruesome, late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article ran under the headline "Ashcroft Co-Sponsors Bill to Ban 'Partial Birth' Abortion Nationwide." The Post Dispatch article reported that even the American Medical Association, which traditionally opposes restrictions on abortion, endorsed a ban on partial-birth abortions.
It's irresponsible of the Times to make it look as if Mr. Ashcroft was speaking of all abortions when he was in fact speaking only of a specific kind of abortion. It's also strange that the Times took the Ashcroft quotes from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch rather than directly from his remarks on the Senate floor on April 29, 1999. It is those remarks that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was quoting from. They are part of the Congressional Record, and they are easily accessible through electronic databases. And those remarks make clear how the senator's view on partial-birth abortion fits into his overall approach to the question of abortion rights. He said, "I realize, however, that not everyone agrees with my view on abortion. Indeed, I recognize that the American people remain deeply divided on this issue. But where there is common ground, we need to move forward and protect life."
One wonders how the New York Times found this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, classified it as referring to all abortion rather than simply the partial-birth procedure, and at the same time disregarded Mr. Ashcroft's Senate speech. One might suspect the New York Times was spoon-fed the Ashcroft quote by some pro-abortion-rights group with an interest in borking President-elect Bush's nominee for the job of attorney general. Smartertimes.com would never suggest, however, that the Times would make such a journalistic error as accepting that kind of information from an advocacy group and passing it on to readers without labeling its source or independently checking it. It must have been just a case of innocent carelessness.