Row Your Boat

I have a new piece up at Salon responding to Megan McArdle’s recent bizarre-o piece in the Daily Beast:

For a Philadelphia-based writer covering the Kermit Gosnell case since 2011, perhaps the only thing more frustrating than the anti-choice activists exploiting this tragedy by willfully distorting the facts are the casually informed who, 28 months after the grand jury report was published, seemingly glance it over before pounding out another erroneous diatribe.

The latest infraction, and frankly one of the worst, came this morning over at the Daily Beast, where Megan McArdle made good on her column’s title of “Asymmetrical Information.”

In a story called “Kermit Gosnell Found Guilty of Murdering Three Babies: The Philadelphia abortionist is guilty of three counts of first degree murder. Why didn’t we stop him sooner?” McArdle attempts to answer the already answered question with a combination of errors and speculation.

First, the blatant errors.

- Read the rest here.

“No qualified health plan offered in this Commonwealth through the health insurance exchange shall include coverage for the performance of any abortion,” reads the bill, sponsored by State Rep. Donna Oberlander (R-Clarion County).

Rep. Brian Sims (D-Philadelphia) was one of the Democrats to speak out against the bill, and vote against it. In an impassioned speech on the House floor, he said the bill’s purpose was to discriminate against poor women.

“This legislation is about advancing an ideology of oppression and suppression,” he said. “Each of us put our hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

- From Randy LoBasso’s piece on HB 818, AKA the “More Gosnells, please Act.”

Perhaps if reproductive healthcare wasn’t embraced as a religious issue on the right and dismissed as a “women’s issue” on the left, it would have received more national coverage. Though abortion as a buzzword is considered a red-state-vs.-blue-state hot-button issue and, in fact, was considered one of the most important issues of the 2012 presidential campaign, what the Gosnell media case reveals is that abortion in reality—specifically, the reality of what poor women’s bodies must endure when safe access is not ensured—is neither a red nor blue issue. It’s pink.

- From my new Philly Weekly story on the media & Kermit Gosnell.