NY Times hires new, conservative op-ed columnist

[struggle4progress]

March 11, 2009

NEW YORK - ... he Times announced Wednesday that Ross G. Douthat (DOW'-thut), a 29-year-old writer and editor at The Atlantic, will initially write online columns for the newspaper beginning in mid-April. Douthat's columns eventually will appear in the printed newspaper and a blog ... http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--newyorktimes-newc0311mar11,0,2729692.story


It's All About Abortion! Douthat's Misguided Attempts to Attack Planned Parenthood
Amie Newman on December 15, 2008 - 5:35pm

Is there anything, at this point, that can explain Ross Douthat's hubris in attacking a health care provider that offers care to millions of low-income Americans, as health care becomes more a privilege than a right for all Americans?

His latest column reveals he enjoys making baseless claims to support his belief system. Douthat, like many anti-choice movement members, wants to strip women (and men) of a certain income level of this country of reproductive and sexual health care because he doesn't like that some providers offer comprehensive, legal medical procedures with which he doesn’t agree. Douthat is opposed to legal abortion, so he painstakingly plays off of a Family Research Council fabricated controversy over Planned Parenthood - the provider nationwide that happens to represent one of the few options remaining for women (and men!) of a certain income level who need (no, not want) critical health care like contraception, family planning, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, HIV testing, annual exams, Pap smears, and more ...

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/15/its-all-about-abortion-douthats-misguided-attempts-attack-planned-parenthood

[billyoc]

1. I had a lot of respect for the New York Times

a long, long time ago.

[Metta]

2. Me, too. Before they started making stuff up.

... a misguided approach towards embracing bipartisanship? The results are awful and polarizing.

[corruptmewithpower]

3. I read the column. It looks like a pretty straight forward piece from

an anti-abortion point of view.

Why the NYT needs a right winger's opinion column is the real question.

[struggle4progress]

5. Research: Public funds prevent 800,000 abortions a year (Feb 09)

Updated 2/24/2009 1:58 PM
By David Crary, Associated Press

NEW YORK — ... Last month, under withering Republican criticism, House Democrats abandoned an attempt to include an expansion of family planning services for the poor in the economic stimulus bill ... Surveying data from the 2006 fiscal year, the report says the national family planning program prevented 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies. Based on statistical analysis and projections, these pregnancies would have resulted in 860,000 unintended births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages, according to the report ... Some conservatives, however, dislike Title X because one of its big recipients is the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a major provider of abortions as well as family planning services. Title X funds cannot be used for abortions ... http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-02-24-family-planning_N.htm

Here's Douthat:

My Tax Dollars At Work
14 Dec 2008 10:45 am
<Ross Douthat>
Inquiring liberal minds want to know why pro-lifers are eager to have the government stop giving Planned Parenthood hundreds of millions of dollars every year. After all, writes Ezra Klein, "abortion services comprise three percent of the services" that Planned Parenthood delivers, which means that if you cut their funding "you're mainly cutting contraception funding, thus ensuring more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions ... This is how the pro-life movement also becomes, in effect, the pro-herpes movement and the anti-birth control movement" ... And even if they weren't massaging the numbers - even if their non-abortion business were enormous enough to make that three percent claim legitimate - they would still be performing more than 250,000 abortions a year ... http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/my_tax_dollars_at_work.php

Douthat is dishonest. His column is carefully constructed to create the impression that tax dollars support Planned Parenthood's abortion service. In fact, they don't: those dollars support contraception and similar reproductive services. Worse, Douthat responds to the observation that his tax dollars don't support abortion, by attempting to discredit the factual observation -- not by facts, but by a sort of noisy emotionalism

[Richard Steele]

4. The NYT is in a deep hole, and has brilliantly decided to DIG FASTER.

Quite sad, actually. I'm really gonna miss it.

[JohnWxy]

6. recommended.