NY Times Botches Abortion Conversation

By Debbie Nathan, RH Reality Check. Posted January 16, 2009.

When Times reporter Jennifer Lee contacted the Ibis and Gynuity researchers in December, they could not understand why the Times was doing a news story. We said, ‘There's no news now about misoprostol,'" said Winikoff. "We told her, ‘Maybe there will be if you wait for the study.'" Their fears about premature use of their research were well founded. Lee's editor at the Times, Jodi Rudoren, told RH Reality Check that when Lee talked to her about the study to make a case for an article, she gave an estimated figure for women reporting misoprostol use that far surpassed what the researchers say is correct. 

And the Times article hammers misoprostol's dangers, while completely ignoring all the research supporting its potential for relatively safe and effective DIY use. "We told her about that data and our education efforts," Grossman said. Both topics have been covered in other publications in recent years.  

The Times article also states -- wrongly -- that self-induced abortions in New York are "illicit," and women do them "illegally." In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 38 states outlaw self-abortion, in laws which often track repressive statutes left over from pre-Roe v. Wade days. But New York isn't one of them -- women there can legally self abort early pregnancies if they want to.   

Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, director of policy and advocacy at New York-based National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, also was interviewed for the Times story, and she is disturbed by the resulting article. "We dispute the Times' implication that accessing clinics is very easy," she said. "There's the idea among undocumented women that they'll be deported if they go to a clinic, and the Times is wrong about the price of an abortion being cheap for many women."

After the Times piece came out, the national media followed with articles saying that misoprostol use among US Latinas is common, increasing, risky and illegal. As a result, Gonzalez-Rojas said, "there could be legislative action" to further outlaw or crack down on self-induced abortions, "including to criminalize women's use of misoprostol" in the name of protecting them. "We do have concerns."

Dr. Anne Davis, an OBGYN and medical director of New York City-based Physicians for Reproductive Health and Choice, has more fundamental objections. An OBGYN with a practice in Upper Manhattan that includes many low-income, Latina patients, Davis said she felt the Times article "was trying to do a bit of an ‘us versus them' thing," implying that poor, immigrant women have completely different attitudes than Times readers do.  "There are plenty of people in Upper Manhattan who are having abortions by accessing the system; they are the overwhelming majority of the community," she said. "Misoprostol is a complex subject. I have seen many women who've used it. And I have seen serious complications. But misoprostol is absolutely appropriate for abortion if there's no other option. The problem is, there is a medical discussion and a sociological discussion about what's right for women." When either conversation intrudes on the other without careful research, thought, and language, David says, needless controversy results.  The message from any discussion of misoprostol, she says, is that "We need to do better for women and make sure all of them get good reproductive medical care as soon as they need it. That's the most important thing."  

See more stories tagged with: abortion, new york times, ru-486, misoprostol, cytotec

Debbie Nathan is a New York City-based writer and co-author, with Michael Snedeker, of Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt.

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