Chicago Tribune Shows More Bias

The double standard on news coverage of the abortion issue was glaringly obvious on April 26, 2004. The Chicago Tribune ran a front page story on the so-called "March for Women's Lives" that included a front page picture plus another wide shot to convey crowd size placed on the continuation page. In contrast, the annual March for Life on January 22nd has sometimes received absolutely no coverage in recent years and certainly no pictures to convey crowd size.

Even if the April 25th pro-abortion march did generate more people than January's March for Life, there were far less than the 1.15 million claimed by organizers. Even so, that figure was mentioned in the "news" story. The March for Life occurs on a cold weekday in January while this march took place on a warm Sunday in April. That alone can account for most of the difference in crowd size. However, the last pro-abortion march took place in 1992 while the March for Life produces 125,000 to 250,000 people every January. Since most people do not attend every year, the total number of people willing to express support for the right to life far surpasses the total of pro-abortion marchers.

Not only that, aggressive recruitment for Sunday's march has taken place for nearly a year within 1000 pro-abortion organizations. Pro-Lifers have never needed to use such means to produce large attendance. Because of last minute concerns about crowd size, organizers of the pro-abortion march even asked anti-war, anti-IMF, and other radical protest groups to join them. So how many people did they get? Some estimates range from as low as 250,000 to about 500,000 at the outside.

What might have been newsworthy is the abuse that about 1000 brave supporters of life took from pro-abortion marchers. They lined the sidewalks along eight blocks of the march. About half of these witnesses for life were women who regret their abortions. One of these women named Annie stated, "During the march we stood in total silence, not replying or saying one word to anything that was said or done to us." She continued, "Nothing prepared me for literally mobs of livid people screaming the most hateful vicious snide things at me personally. We were spit on, and had an egg hurled at us." Of course, this violent and hateful behavior of pro-abortion marchers was not mentioned in the "news" article. Thankfully, an April 28th Tribune commentary by Kathleen Parker did reveal some of this hateful behavior. Which group of people would you rather see guide the nation's future: hateful pro-death supporters or loving Pro-Life witnesses to the truth?

Bill Beckman