The Associated Press (AP) issued new guidelines advising reporters not to use the terms “crisis pregnancy center” or “pregnancy resource center” but to instead refer to centers that offer pro-life counseling and support as “anti-abortion centers.”
Reporters should “avoid potentially misleading terms such as pregnancy resource centers or pregnancy counseling centers,” because “these terms don’t convey that the centers’ general aim is to prevent abortions,” according to the AP’s Abortion Topical Guide.
The AP publishes the most widely used style guide, which journalists and editors across the country look to determine proper rules for coverage. According to the Daily Signal, the AP made the rule change in November 2022.
In its updated guidance, the AP states that though the centers provide “counseling, material support and/or housing,” because their purpose is to “divert or discourage women from having abortions” they should be labeled “anti-abortion centers.”
The new AP policy suggests the term “crisis pregnancy center” be used only if placed within quotation marks and if it is explained that its purpose is to “dissuade people from getting an abortion.”
The AP instructs reporters to frame the abortion debate as “anti-abortion” or “abortion rights” and to not use the term “pro-life” or “pro-choice.”
Reporters are also advised not to talk about a fetal heartbeat when referring to laws that ban abortion after a detectable heartbeat. Rather, the guide says, they should use the term “cardiac activity” as “the embryo isn’t yet a fetus and it has only begun forming a rudimentary heart.”
“The Associated Press shows itself to be tongue-tied with political correctness in trying to finesse how to explain organizations dedicated to public service,” Kristi Hamrick, chief media and policy strategist at Students for Life of America, told CNA.
“Without any sense of irony, they want to call Pregnancy Resource Centers ‘anti-abortion centers,’ diminishing the love and support such nonprofits offer to mothers and their children, born and preborn,” Hamrick said. “With that logic, hospitals must be ‘anti-death centers’ and our food support through the federal government named ‘anti-starving’ programs.”
Crisis pregnancy centers, which typically offer pregnant women and families free resources and baby materials, have faced a spate of attacks, vandalism, and acts of intimidation since May 2022, when the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked.
According to the Family Research Council, more than 100 pregnancy centers, churches, and pro-life organizations have been attacked or vandalized.
See CNA’s coverage of the attacks against pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups and churches below.
Some Democratic politicians, such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have called for a “crackdown” on crisis pregnancy centers. In an August 2022 speech on the U.S. Senate floor, Warren decried pregnancy centers as “organizations that deliberately deceive women and girls who are seeking help to terminate a pregnancy.”
In another viral video, Warren said pregnancy centers “torture” pregnant women and called for them to be shut down across the nation.
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CNA Staff, Nov 18, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As Catholic schools struggle to reach pre-pandemic student enrollment levels, Catholic home education appears to be enjoying a small renaissance, in keeping … […]
A photo of Deborah Emmanuel’s photo on her Facebook page. Emmanuel, a Christian student in Nigeria, was killed by an Islamic mob on her college campus on May 12, 2022. / CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 23, 2022 / 14:01 pm (CNA).
Deborah Emmanuel, the Nigerian Christian student who was murdered by a Muslim mob last month, spent her final hours with a close friend who has shared exclusive details of the brutal killing with CNA.
CNA is using the pseudonym “Mary” for the woman’s protection. A Christian herself, she nearly was killed by the same mob.
Significantly, Mary’s account contradicts the claim of authorities that they attempted to rescue Emmanuel from the mob but were “overwhelmed.”
On the contrary, the police “could have stopped the murder if they had really tried,” Mary told CNA.
Emmanuel’s so-called “blasphemy murder” took place on May 12 on the campus of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, Sokoto State, a major city located in the northwest corner of Nigeria. The city is home to the Muslim Sultan who serves as the top religious authority for Nigeria’s 100 million Muslim believers.
Prior to the attack, Emmanuel, a home economics major who attended Evangelical Church Winning All, was bullied by fanatical Muslim students at the teacher’s college for audio statements she made on WhatsApp, a messaging platform. She credited Jesus Christ for her success on a recent exam, and when threatened and told to apologize she refused, invoking the Holy Spirit, saying “Holy Ghost fire! Nothing will happen to me,” according to WhatsApp messages reviewed by CNA.
In the aftermath of these heated exchanges, a Muslim mob attacked Emmanuel on the college’s campus. After an hours’ long siege, the mob beat and stoned her to death, then set her body on fire with burning tires, according to graphic video footage posted online. The rioters also rampaged in a Catholic Church compound in Sokoto, according to reports. The riots spread to other Christian-owned properties over two days.
A relative of Emmanuel’s, who said he was standing approximately 60 feet from the mob, also told CNA he believes the police could have saved her. He, too, asked that his identity be withheld for his safety.
Unarmed campus security personnel made a futile attempt to rescue Emmanuel, according to a campus security report shared with CNA. But Emmanuel’s relative said there were dozens of armed police officers on the scene who didn’t fire their weapons.
The commissioner of police in the state also said officers did not fire their weapons. However, he maintained that only 15 of his officers were at the scene, according to a report in The Epoch Times.
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Diocese of Sokoto has strongly condemned the attack and called on Emmanuel’s killers to be brought to justice..
“This matter must be treated as a criminal act,” he said. You can read his full statement here.
A plea for help
On the day of Emmanuel’s death, Mary received a frantic phone call from her around 9 a.m, asking for help. By that time, women who lived in her dormitory had begun slapping Emmanuel, Mary told CNA.
Mary arrived at the campus to see her friend surrounded by a mob and being led by a campus staffer to a gatehouse building for her protection. The Muslim students had bloodied her face and head with blows from rods and were joined by male students who believed their duty was to execute a blasphemer on the spot, Mary said.
“Allahu Akbar!” meaning “God is Great” was bellowed for hours, she said.
Mary initially stayed outside the building and tried to intercede for her friend, but she said it wasn’t long before the mob turned on her, too. Within moments Mary was trying to ward off punches and blows from sticks as she backed away from the gatehouse and toward the gate of the college 40 feet away.
Mary said a college lecturer rescued her and brought her to join Emmanuel inside the gatehouse by 10 a.m.
At 10:25 a.m., the relative said, six officers of the Department of State Security (DSS) — the equivalent to the FBI in the U.S. — arrived, firing their rifles in the air but with no effect. Five minutes later, he said, a group of Sokoto police came on the scene and fired tear gas, temporarily scattering the mob.
The above map is based on eyewitness accounts of the murder of Nigerian Christian student Deborah Emmanuel on her college’s campus on May 12, 2022. Graphic by Alexander Hunter
For about 10 minutes police had an opportunity to disperse the mob and force their way to the gatehouse to extract Mary and Emmanuel, Emmanuel’s relative believes. But that did not happen.
By 11 a.m., the mob had returned to the building, holding cloths against their faces to ward off the tear gas. The mob tried hurling stones at Mary through the windows of the locked gatehouse, but Mary barricaded herself behind a table.
The mob then threw gasoline on the women through the front windows and attempted to burn them alive, Mary said.
“Deborah was soaked with gasoline, but when lighted plastic was pitched in through the windows, I quickly stamped the flames out,” Mary said.
No escape
All of this transpired as police and DSS officers watched from a safe distance, according to Emmanuel’s relative.
The traumatized women said little to each other, but Emmanuel was still hoping to do her examination that day, Mary said. At one point, she recalled, Emmanuel asked, “What time is it? I have an examination at noon.” Mary said she looked at her cell phone and told her it was 1 p.m.
After another excruciating hour of siege, the mob pushed down a single Sokoto policeman guarding the door, broke the padlock on the door, and rushed in to find Mary and Emmanuel hiding behind furniture, Mary and the relative related. Two rioters placed a chain around Mary’s neck and pulled it hard, trying to strangle her, she recounted.
“Let this girl go! She is not an offender,” Mary recalled one of the rioters shouting. But as they released her, a young man in the mob grabbed Emmanuel and took her to the front steps of the gatehouse. There she was bludgeoned with steel pipes and wooden rods and stoned, the relative said.
Two DSS officers attempted to rescue Emmanuel but were hit by stones and pushed aside, the relative said. The police officers remained in position and did not come to her aid, he alleged.
Mary collapsed inside the gatehouse gasping from the strangulation. Approximately 40 minutes later, she said, she was roused by one of the mob to leave the building, which was on fire.
As she walked through the smoke, Mary saw the gatehouse burning and Emmanuel’s lifeless body in flames.
The face of Christian persecution
In the aftermath of Emmanuel’s murder, human rights advocates and others have leveled sharp criticism at Nigeria’s government leaders for not doing enough to stem the rising tide of violence directed at Christians and other non-Muslims.
Relatives of Deborah Emmanuel at her burial in Niger State, Nigeria. Courtesy of the Emmanuel family
Anti-Christian hatred was evident in days of rioting in Sokoto following the arrest of two suspects in Emmanuel’s murder. The rioters reportedly were incensed that there were any arrests at all.
“Deborah Emmanuel, like kidnapping victim Leah Sharibu (who was enslaved by Boko Haram insurgents in 2019), has become the face of Christian persecution in Nigeria,” said Kyle Abts, executive director of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON). “There has not been an official report from the security forces on the lynching of Ms. Emmanuel. Her killing and subsequent riots show clear government complicity and coverup.”
Tina Ramirez, founder of the international nonprofit Hardwired Global, also believes the Nigerian government has been unwilling to take a strong stand against blasphemy killings.
“The recent attacks on students are reminiscent of the attacks at Nigerian colleges two decades ago that were the precursor to the growth of extremist groups across Nigeria’s North and Middle Belt,” Ramirez wrote in a text to CNA.
Pilgrims from South Korea wave a flag at the closing Mass of World Youth Day Lisbon with Pope Francis on Aug. 6, 2023. / Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
ACI Prensa Staff, May 24, 2024 / 14:56 pm (CNA).
Nearly 300 delegates hailing from bishops’ co… […]
3 Comments
All’s fair. Then AP and all follow through and call abortion centers antilife centers. Antilife is exactly what Planned Parenthood and the like are, as is the current executive administration.
Sen Elizabeth Warren typifies the culture of death mentality that sullies American Constitutional democracy and degrades humanness. A perversion of justice that seeks to criminalize opposition. A perverse satanically conceived mentality that is anti God antilife anti justice.
Christians will likely be subject to more and worse unless there’s a spiritually miraculous turnaround. As such we may be compelled to be saintly.
And why aren’t “news reporters” relabeled as “anti-news distorters;”
Or the AP as “Abortion Promoters” rather than Ass-ociated Press;
Or the AP newsprint as “news-pimp,”
Or abortion centers as “anti-life centers,”
Or, matching the AP’s new “cardiac activity,” the AP itself as “brain-stem addictivity”?
From history, these euphemisms:
“I know of not a single case where anyone came out of the chambers alive” (Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess on Zyklon B gas, 1947) and “It never ever results in live births” (an experienced abortionist on dissection and extraction, 1981);
“The subjects were forced to undergo death-dealing experiments ‘without receiving anesthetics’” (Dachau freezing experiments, 1942) and “the fetuses are fully alive when we cut their heads off, but anesthetics are definitely unnecessary” (Fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980);
“No criticism was raised” (conference of German physicians to the Ravenbrueck sulfanilamide experiments, Berlin, May 1943) and “no one ever raised an eyebrow” (meeting of American pediatricians to an experiment involving beheading of aborted babies, San Francisco, 1973); and
“What should we do with this garbage” (Treblinka, 1942) and “an aborted baby is just garbage” (fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980).
In Mein Kampf (1925) Adolf Hitler referred to Jews as “a parasite in the body of other peoples”; fifty years later, the year of Roe v. Wade, a radical feminist group branded the unborn as “a parasite within the mother’s body.”
All’s fair. Then AP and all follow through and call abortion centers antilife centers. Antilife is exactly what Planned Parenthood and the like are, as is the current executive administration.
Sen Elizabeth Warren typifies the culture of death mentality that sullies American Constitutional democracy and degrades humanness. A perversion of justice that seeks to criminalize opposition. A perverse satanically conceived mentality that is anti God antilife anti justice.
Christians will likely be subject to more and worse unless there’s a spiritually miraculous turnaround. As such we may be compelled to be saintly.
And why aren’t “news reporters” relabeled as “anti-news distorters;”
Or the AP as “Abortion Promoters” rather than Ass-ociated Press;
Or the AP newsprint as “news-pimp,”
Or abortion centers as “anti-life centers,”
Or, matching the AP’s new “cardiac activity,” the AP itself as “brain-stem addictivity”?
From history, these euphemisms:
“I know of not a single case where anyone came out of the chambers alive” (Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess on Zyklon B gas, 1947) and “It never ever results in live births” (an experienced abortionist on dissection and extraction, 1981);
“The subjects were forced to undergo death-dealing experiments ‘without receiving anesthetics’” (Dachau freezing experiments, 1942) and “the fetuses are fully alive when we cut their heads off, but anesthetics are definitely unnecessary” (Fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980);
“No criticism was raised” (conference of German physicians to the Ravenbrueck sulfanilamide experiments, Berlin, May 1943) and “no one ever raised an eyebrow” (meeting of American pediatricians to an experiment involving beheading of aborted babies, San Francisco, 1973); and
“What should we do with this garbage” (Treblinka, 1942) and “an aborted baby is just garbage” (fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980).
In Mein Kampf (1925) Adolf Hitler referred to Jews as “a parasite in the body of other peoples”; fifty years later, the year of Roe v. Wade, a radical feminist group branded the unborn as “a parasite within the mother’s body.”
Indeed?? Then maybe the AP reporters need to start calling abortion centers by their real name: slaughterhouses.