Fox News’ evening “opinion” hosts completely ignored Tuesday’s ruling from the all-Republican Arizona Supreme Court reviving a 160-year-old state law that bans abortions under almost all circumstances, as the network continues its pattern of shielding viewers from stories that could damage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Arizona’s restored statute “forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time,” The Washington Post reported. “Under the 1864 territorial law, which went into effect 48 years before Arizona became a state, anyone who administers an abortion could face a mandatory prison sentence of two to five years.” Arizona Republicans had expanded the court in 2016, and every current member was appointed by a Republican governor.
Trump bears a share of the responsibility for this ruling: His Supreme Court appointees were crucial votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protections for abortion rights which had stood for nearly 50 years and opening the door for statewide abortion bans and other extreme policies. The ruling is also consistent with the GOP’s most recent platform, which calls for a nationwide ban on all abortions because “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
In short, the ruling is a victory for the anti-abortion movement’s decadeslong quest to ban the procedure — and could theoretically be treated as such by an ideologically conservative news outlet. But you can tell that Fox’s stars and executives, who prioritize their effort to return Trump to the White House, think the story undermines that goal because the network is giving it minimal airtime.
Fox provided a mere 12 minutes of coverage to the Arizona ruling on Tuesday; America Reports, Your World, and Special Report were the network’s only programs to address it at all. By contrast, CNN gave the ruling 2 hours of airtime across 8 shows, while MSNBC provided 2 hours and 20 minutes of coverage over 9 shows.
