Yahoo! Finance tried one of the most pathetic tactics to deflect responsibility away from President Joe Biden for America’s ongoing supply chain crisis: blaming pro-lifers for the diaper shortage.
The publication belched up a wild Oct. 9 propaganda story with an insane headline: “America is facing a diaper crisis, and the anti-abortion movement is making it worse.”
Yahoo! Finance senior editor Sandra Salathe made the arbitrary connection that diapers may be in shorter supply because crisis pregnancy centers focus on protecting life rather than encouraging abortion.
Salathe wielded leftist pro-abortion group Equity Forward to lambaste pro-life groups like Heartbeat International — an “interdenominational Christian organization that claims to serve approximately 2,850 pregnancy help centers, maternity homes, and nonprofit adoption agencies” — for supposedly “‘solely exist[ing] to deter people from getting abortion care.’"
How dare pro-life centers protect the unborn, right Yahoo!? The outlet’s tweet of its story was heavily ratioed, with over 1,900 comments and only over 180 likes so far.
America is facing a diaper crisis, and the anti-abortion movement may not be helping https://t.co/Uz4y07grfP by @srsalathe pic.twitter.com/9M7vonukhy
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) October 9, 2022
Salathe blamed the “coronavirus pandemic” for playing “a heavy role in this [diaper] crisis, and as households seek help from nonprofit organizations, anti-abortion centers (AACs) may be misrepresenting the extent of their services.” But nowhere in her article did Salathe justify her assertion that the “anti-abortion movement” was somehow exacerbating the diaper crisis. She seems to have just pulled that argument out of the ether.
Equity Forward Director Ashley Underwood bemoaned to Salathe that crisis pregnancy centers were using their cash hauls to pay for things like — wait for it — “staff salaries” and outreach. Apparently Salathe and Underwood don’t understand that workers need to be paid.
Underwood mourned the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the longstanding pro-abortion Roe v. Wade decision as the reason behind a recent amplification of for pro-life centers’ message: “‘Since June when the Dobbs decision was released, we've definitely seen an uptick in rhetoric from anti-abortion centers,’” Underwood said. "’They are in the perfect position to help people, but they've existed decades before that decision, and we've seen that they don't use this money towards helping people. So much of the money, specifically the public tax dollars they receive, goes towards promoting their own endeavors; not serving the communities in which they exist.’”
Yahoo! didn’t bother mentioning CRC Research’s August poll that reportedly found that both Republicans and Democrats are “in agreement that pro-life clinics should receive government assistance, with 70 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans strongly favoring their public funding.”
Yahoo! howled that research by Equity Forward found “inconsistencies” in Heartbeat International’s 2019 claim that it provided “1.85 million individuals with free baby supplies, including more than 2 million baby clothing outfits, more than 19,000 strollers, and more than 1.2 million packs of diapers.” But Equity Forward’s report didn’t challenge the veracity of those numbers. The organization’s beef with the pro-life center was a more general criticism that the variety of supplies it provided was inadequate.: “The ‘help’ from AACs is inadequate and a far cry from the very real list of material items needed for babies.”
The Federalist retorted in its write-up Salathe and Underwood were holding pro-life centers to an unrealistic standard of perfection. Those activists, according to The Federalist, were quixotically targeting “the fact that the same pregnancy centers they want investigated and shut down for human rights violations (how ironic) aren’t always equipped to provide baby supplies to 100 percent of the families that walk through their doors.”
Conservatives are under attack. Tweet @YahooFinance and hold the outlet to account for its nutty attempt to blame the pro-life movement for America’s diaper crisis.
