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Fox News ignored speeches of women discussing their abortion care experiences at the DNC

Special Programs Abortion Rights & Reproductive Health

Written by Chloe Simon & Bushra Sultana

Published

During the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, three women spoke onstage about their experiences with pregnancies, miscarriages, and abortions. Fox News ignored these speeches, with a couple of Fox figures dismissing their importance, while CNN and MSNBC aired them live. 

  • Amanda Zurawski and her husband Josh; Kaitlyn Joshua; and Hadley Duvall all spoke about their different experiences with complicated pregnancies. 

    As Josh said, the Zurawskis were told “with 100% certainty” that their child would not survive but were still sent home and had to wait three days “until Amanda was sick enough to receive standard abortion care.” She eventually sued the state of Texas alongside 19 other women and two OB-GYNs in an effort to obtain “more specific guidelines about what situations qualify for medical emergency exceptions to Texas’ strict ban.” 

    Kaitlyn Joshua was turned away from two emergency rooms in Louisiana as she began to miscarry in her 11th week of pregnancy. “Because of the Louisiana abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” she said. 

    Hadley Duvall shared her history with sexual assault as a child and resulting pregnancy, saying, “At age 12, I took my first pregnancy test and it was positive. That was the first time I was ever told, ‘You have options.’ I can’t imagine not having a choice. But today that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans.”  

    Fox News did not show any of these speeches to their audience. Some figures on Fox News even denied the importance of their messaging. 

    As the speakers’ voices echoed in the background, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum said, “Right now we’re listening to some stories of people's personal experiences after the change in the abortion law, but there are voters, Hispanic voters, Black voters, lots of voters out there, who -- for whom, this is not a good issue.” 

    Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume dismissed their stories, asking, “What does it say about the modern state of the Democratic Party that it could not ask these abortion speakers to stand aside to make room for the president of the United States to speak at a reasonable hour tonight? … This is the party of abortion. It is their biggest issue, and in their own minds I think they think it’s their biggest advantage, which tells you a lot.” 

    Abortion rights are extremely popular in the U.S., with 63% of the public agreeing that “abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” Over the past few months, Fox News has repeatedly offered negligible coverage on news relating to abortion and reproductive rights, seemingly to block its viewers from any unpopular news that could damage the Republican Party or former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. 

    For example, Fox News buried a court decision implementing a near-total abortion ban in Arizona; barely covered the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are legally equivalent to children; and almost completely ignored Florida’s implementation of a six-week abortion ban.