how did this slip past the editors?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 23, 2005

The following article from the San Francisco Chronicle on yesterday's pro-life march in SF is remarkable (for the secular media) in its attempt to communicate fairly the aims and the tactics of both pro-life and pro-abortion demonstrators.

In dueling marches, about 6,000 antiabortion activists in the Walk for Life West Coast were jeered and harangued by about 3,000 advocates for abortion rights, some waving wire hangers, a symbol of the unsafe procedures women feared before abortion was legal.

Walk for Life organizers Dolores Meehan and Eva Muntean said they knew holding an anti-abortion rally in the liberal bastion of San Francisco would spark outrage. But doing so would draw the greatest exposure, Meehan said. ...

Organizers of the dueling protests had divergent strategies. The antiabortion group specifically avoided confronting its opponents, while the pro-choice contingent that lined the Embarcadero berated the larger group with insults and accused them of bringing in people from out of town to bolster its cause. ...

For the most part, the antiabortion activists ignored taunts from pro-choice marchers, smiling politely in response to jeers, flashing peace signs and singing, "God Bless America." Abortion rights advocates, however, were anything but subdued, regarding the antiabortion marchers as invaders of the city.

"Back alleys -- no more! Abortion rights for rich and poor!" many shouted. "Keep your rosaries out of my ovaries," one sign read. Some shouted obscenities.

Not perfect, but an enormous improvement on the standard tendentious treatment. Imagine the NYT or the Boston Globe deigning to report insults and obscenities from the pro-aborts. Even the accompanying photos don't appear to be doctored to the pro-lifers' disadvantage.