Letter to the NYTimes Editor

August 17, 2009

 Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

 Dear Editor,

  I was saddened to read “False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Familiar Roots” in the Friday (August 14, 2009) edition of the Times.  Rather than examine the actual text of the bills, the Times simply editorialized against opponents of provisions within the health care proposals currently being considered.  The opening paragraph reads like something that might be uttered by Robert Gibbs during the daily press briefing in the West Wing. The job description of the White House Press Secretary and an independent newspaper are not one in the same, and by continuing to justify rather than report on this administration’s agenda the Times is failing it readership.

What the Times calls “rumors,” in fact, have some roots in a piece which the Times itself published.   That item, interestingly omitted from the article’s chronology of the rising “specter of government-sponsored, forced euthanasia,” was a 5,000-word feature piece published in the New York Times Magazine on July 19^th by Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, openly advocating the rationing of healthcare on the basis of QALYs, a measurement of one’s “quality-adjusted-life-year.”

As National Right to Life has noted in its analysis of the current proposal before the House, there is no protection to prevent Comparative Effectiveness Research from being used to discriminatorily deny healthcare based on age, present or predicted disability or expected length of life. To insist that this is a dangerous omission which could allow comparative effectiveness to be used to deny care to the most vulnerable patients is not fear-mongering, it is a realistic concern. Perhaps if the Times was not so ideologically invested in promoting this administration’s agenda they would be able to see that as well.

 Sincerely,

Derrick Jones
Communications Director
National Right to Life

NYTimes: Gets it wrong again

The New York Times gets it wrong….again.  In an editorial entitled, rather caustically, “The Right to Smear,”  the Times has this to say about the “lies” in a proposed ad speaking about Barack Obama’s position:

“It [the proposed ad] even employs an Obama-like voice pledging to make taxpayers pay for abortions, help minors conceal abortions from their parents, and legalize late-term abortions.  To spread these lies, the group wants an injunction against the election commission’s disclosure and spending rules . . .”

In reality, there’s not an untruth among those positions attributed to Obama that the Times singles out.  The ad in question is referring to pro-abortion policies which would be implemented under the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act,” which is co-sponsored by Illinois Senator Barack Obama.  Below is a letter to the Times editor, in response to the editorial, from our very own Douglas Johnson:

Dear Editor:

In “The Right to Smear” (Sept. 21), the Times hopes the federal courts
will block an ad that “even employs an Obama-like voice pledging to make
taxpayers pay for abortions, help minors conceal abortions from their
parents, and legalize late-term abortions.  To spread these lies, the
group wants an injunction . . .”

Obama is a cosponsor of the “Freedom of Choice Act” (S. 1173).  The
plain language of this bill invalidates restrictions on public funding
of abortions and laws requiring parental notification before an abortion
– points touted by the bill’s chief sponsors and supporting groups.  The
bill’s chief sponsors also proclaim that it would nullify the federal
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the law actually referred to in the ad
script.  On July 17, 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action
Fund, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice
Act.”  Obama has also voted consistently against restrictions on public
funding of abortion, and against requiring parental notification for
abortion.

Sincerely,
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee