I was surprised Democrat strategist Kirsten Powers acknowledged on the Nov. 6 "O'Reilly Factor" that the mainstream media always leans left when reporting on abortion.

A ready example would be a story that same day in the Chicago Tribune about the Supreme Court hearing on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. The Trib nicely advanced the abortion industry's talking points.

Those talking points, which I was in court to hear Wednesday, were that Congress "absolutely betrayed" a 2000 Supreme Court ruling against Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban by basically resubmitting the same ban in 2003 that the Court previously ruled was vague and excluded a health exception.

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On the point of vagueness, I noted abortion industry attorneys exclusively referred in court to partial-birth abortion as "intact D&E," rather than the previously accepted medical term, "D&X." (They hate the term, "partial-birth abortion.")

This likely indicates a permanent shift in semantics as pro-aborts try to blur distinctions between partial-birth abortion and another late-term abortion procedure they called a "nonintact D&E" or "standard D&E," and which they claimed the new ban would outlaw as well.

But what obviously differentiate the two are the words "nonintact" and "intact."

To commit D&E, aka dilatation and evacuation, the abortionist dismembers the baby while she is still completely inside her mother's uterus and delivers a "nonintact" dead baby.

To commit partial-birth abortion the abortionist delivers a living baby halfway, then kills her by suctioning out her brain, then delivers an "intact" dead baby.

Congress addressed Supreme Court complaints that the Nebraska ban might impinge on D&E abortions by creating a hyperspecific definition of partial-birth abortion that could not be misunderstood. To compare:

• Nebraska ban: "an abortion procedure in which the person performing the abortion partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery."

• Federal ban: "an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant."

As for the health issue, the Nebraska ban contained no factual findings to corroborate that partial-birth abortion is unnecessary for a mother's health, while the federal ban contains substantial findings based on extensive hearings held during the 104th, 105th, 107th and 108th Congresses that found partial-birth abortion might very well be dangerous to women. Historically, the Supreme Court defers to Congress on findings.

The Chicago Tribune's story on partial-birth abortion will likely be typical of the mainstream media, so I want to address its bias.

You'd think the Chicago Tribune would analyze the issues of vagueness and health between the two bans, but it did not. You'd think the Chicago Tribune would at least explain what partial-birth abortion is, but it did not.

Rather, the Tribune led with a tragic story of a mother who "may" have undergone a partial-birth abortion after discovering she was carrying a terminally ill baby. It was not until the end of the article did the reporter clarify the mother had a D&E, and I'm not even convinced of that, given her doctors said her baby would suffer a "painless passing." Late-term babies drawn and quartered certainly do not suffer painless passings.

The Tribune allowed abortionist Cassing Hammond of Northwestern Hospital to state without refutal that if the ban were enacted, "I won't be able to do the procedure in the way that's safest for the patient."

Actually, the abortion industry's attorney had to admit in court she could offer no evidence that partial-birth abortion is ever medically preferred. The very fact it takes three days from beginning to end indicates it can't be committed in the event of emergency.

The Tribune allowed Roger Evans, legal director of Planned Parenthood, to state, "It's not some rare, aberrant, 'late-term,' barbaric procedure that the act is banning. It's banning a wide range of second-trimester abortions that proceed according to methods deemed safest for the patient."

I agree with Roger that singling out partial-birth abortion as aberrant and barbaric is unfair to all other methods of abortion. But I don't think that's what he meant.

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