The world is suffering from an underpopulation crisis, and unless developed countries start making babies faster, we’ll face an economic disaster. You may be more likely to get breast cancer if you have an abortion. And you don’t need to have sex to find love. You would have learned all these new, fun facts if you picked up last Friday’s edition of the Hoya, which came with an anti-abortion publication entitled “STOP THE MADNESS,” paid for by the Human Life Alliance. But the Hoya shouldn’t have included it.
As the Hoya’s Editor-in-Chief acknowledged in a letter from the editor on Tuesday, the slick pamphlet was troubling in itself—it manipulated statistics and distorted facts in a sensationalist way. More serious, though, is that the Hoya chose to publish this advertisement even though the University bars its publications from printing ads that promote abortion rights. The Hoya perpetuated the one-sided view of the abortion debate supported by the University and displayed a lack of journalistic integrity.
Back in 1989, the University blocked the Voice from publishing an advertisement for the National Organizaton for Women. The Hoya and the Voice jointly protested the decison by printing an issue together, writing an editorial that called on the University to change its media policy. Georgetown doesn’t permit the publication of abortion rights ads. This is the University’s prerogative, however misguided it may be. But if this is the policy, a responsible newspaper should not print any anti-abortion pamphlets or advertisements, especially such inflammatory ones.
It might be a difficult story if the pamphlet made a reasonable argument, but its content is at best misleading. It suggests a correlation between breast cancer and abortion, contradicting research done by the National Cancer Institute and the opinion of the medical community. The pamphlet also claims that groups such as Planned Parenthood target African Americans for abortions, a claim that a Planned Parenthood spokesperson dismissed as “obviously not true.”
With the exception of editorials, “nothing in the Hoya is meant to reflect the views of the staff,” Editor-in-Chief Stephen Santulli said in an interview with the Voice. But by running the ‘Madness’ advertisement, the Hoya implicitly advocated the one-sided debate promoted by the University. Moreover, it went against a newspaper’s responsibility to provide balanced information.
Santulli regrets the inclusion of the pamphlet and said that it was approved before he became Editor-in-Chief. Still, the Hoya should be held accountable to its decision. The University doesn’t let you see both sides when it comes to the abortion debate. Does the Hoya?
