There was a news article published today by WTHRtitled “Women could be charged with murder for abortion under Indiana bill.”
I read the article and it’s really bad. Seriously, it’s legitimately really bad. If there were ever a news article that was half-baked and designed to spread fear and inaccurate information, this seems like it would certainly be in the running. Honestly, I’m still surprised it made it past the editor for how bad it is. Not only is it heavily biased and skewed, it only links to the summary of the bill, not the actual text of the bill itself.
The summary basically just explains that the bill is proposing to include unborn babies in the definition of “human being.”
The article is a dumpster fire of word vomit and patronizing half-truths. It says things like, “A juvenile who got an abortion or otherwise caused the termination of a pregnancy could be waived to adult court for the crime of murder.” It even goes on to say, “There is question whether the changes under HB 1334 could lead to a prosecutor seeking the death penalty in the death of a fetus.”
Honestly, I’m still beside myself that it made it past the editor for publication with how blatantly biased and lacking it is with citations. Seriously, I would expect this from Buzzfeed, TMZ, or Cosmo; not an actual, credible news outlet. Or rather, a former actual, credible news outlet.
I’m generally inclined to attribute bad behavior to incompetence before I attribute it to malice, but questionable-at-best opinion pieces masquerading as legitimate news like this make that difficult for me.
After reading the actual text of the 9-page bill, which you can read here, I decided to write the article WTHR should have written if they actually did their due diligence.
“House Bill 1334 proposes to add unborn babies under the definition of human being. If the state succeeds at defining personhood with 14th amendment protections as beginning at conception, then if someone is convicted of these crimes (see list below) resulting in the death of the mother and her unborn baby then they’ll be charged with double homicide since they killed both the mother and her unborn baby. Also, no one is even remotely suggesting criminally prosecuting women who seek out or succeed at having an abortion.”
