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Wednesday Morning Rant

Framing

In any account of any event, there are always two primary components: the facts, and the framing of those facts. Facts are irrefutable. They are, or they are not. There can be a lie or a misapprehension presented as a fact and thus facts are subject to - in the language of our day - debunking, but it is still a matter of fact as such. It is or it isn't. Facts, though, are only part of the story. Sometimes they aren't even the dominant part. The other part is how those facts are framed.

For any account, it's in the framing that biases, ideologies, agendas, etc. surface. The selection of which facts to include and how to present them is how to lead the reader to the "correct" conclusion about those facts. There was stupendous example of this in Mother Jones yesterday (h/t Gentlemen, this is junta manifest). It's a story of a woman from Georgia who died following an out-of-state abortion.

The facts are fairly straightforward:

• Georgia implemented a ban on abortions after six weeks following the Dobbs decision


• A woman named Amber Nicole Thurman was at or beyond six weeks pregnant when the ban went into effect (The article asserts that the law took effect on "the very day she passed the six-week mark of her pregnancy," something that is exceedingly difficult to affirmatively determine)


• Thurman traveled to North Carolina to obtain an abortion


• Thurman was given drugs to terminate her pregnancy


• Thurman returned home to Georgia (implied - the story ends in Georgia, so that is where the next events must have occurred)


• Thurman suffered complications a couple of days after her trip


• Thurman was hospitalized due to pain and bleeding


• The afternoon after she was admitted, Thurman went into surgery


• Thurman died before, during or after the procedure (implied - Mother Jones describes it as "in the OR," which is non-specific)

Those are facts as presented. There is also speculation presented as fact in the article. The three key pieces of speculation or implication masquerading as facts are present in service of the article's framing:

• Thurman terminated her pregnancy relatively late, at more than 20 weeks' gestation (the article asserts that she traveled to NC "where abortions were then allowed past 20 weeks," implying that the abortion was quite late in the term. This is not true, but apparently Mother Jones wants the reader to think it is)
• The follow-up emergency procedure would have been faster and more readily provided in North Carolina had "Thurman lived closer"


• The surgical procedure is harder to come by in Georgia because of the abortion ban, because doctors could be on the hook for performing an abortion with the procedure.

And with this now laid out, we can see how Mother Jones arrived at its framing for the story.

Abortion bans are bad and deadly and women are now dying because of them, with this story as a prime example of it. Post-abortion surgery was delayed because of the ban (this is asserted, but not demonstrated in the article). This woman died because of the ban. It's an easy frame to build. The conclusion woven throughout the article starting from the first sentence is, essentially, 'if not for Georgia's abortion ban, Thurman would be alive today.' It is, of course, unknowable but the assertion is presented as a meta-fact in the article. It is taken for granted.

Except for those niggling pieces of speculation and implication. Those break the frame if you read carefully and - horror of horrors - engage in thoughtcrime and "do your own research." The first problem is in Mother Jones' manipulative writing. When examining the original article from ProPublica, the timing issue gets cleared up, as does additional context:

Thurman wanted a surgical abortion close to home and held out hope as advocates tried to get the ban paused in court, Baker said. But as her pregnancy progressed to its ninth week, she couldn't wait any longer. She scheduled the D&C in North Carolina, where abortion at that stage was still legal...

So not 20 weeks, but nine. It seems Mother Jones wants you to think that this was later in the term than it was, and manipulated the writing to achieve that outcome. It was nine weeks, not in excess of 20. That's a pretty big difference. The original ProPublica source also sheds light on Mother Jones' assertion of "if only she had lived closer:"

On their drive, they hit standstill traffic, Baker said. The clinic couldn't hold Thurman's spot longer than 15 minutes - it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect. Instead, a clinic employee offered Thurman a two-pill abortion regimen approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, mifepristone and misoprostol. Her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment.

Setting aside the speculation in the last quote from ProPublica (that the tight scheduling at the facility was due to abortion-related travel from other states) and its opinion given as fact ("well within the standard of care"), this is important context - context Mother Jones chose to omit.

So she made the appointment but hit traffic and could not reschedule. The drug regimen was a "next-best" option handed out in lieu of the preferred treatment. That drug regimen was within FDA guidance - but only sort of. That's a part that both Mother Jones and ProPublica leave out. I'm not a doctor, but the information sheet is easy to read. Thurman was at the outer edge of guidance (nine weeks, when guidance ends at seven weeks from the last menstruation) and, crucially, there are two conditions that apparently were not met for its use:

- Medical facilities equipped to provide blood transfusions, resuscitation, and/or surgical intervention must be available during treatment and follow-up.
- Regimen requires 3 visits with clinician: day 1 mifepristone administration; day 3 misoprostol administration (unless complete abortion confirmed); and day 14 follow-up examination to confirm complete pregnancy termination and to assess severity of any continued bleeding.

According to the facts presented by ProPublica and subsequently denatured and further warped by Mother Jones, neither of these conditions could have been met. Two days later, back home in Atlanta, is when Thurman had complications. If the clinic in North Carolina had reason to suspect that the medical facilities described would not be available - and that is the conclusion that Mother Jones and ProPublica draw, and assert that it is due to Georgia's abortion restriction - then it was probably malpractice to dispense the drugs in the first place. Involving even less speculation, the dosing and follow-up practices could not have been satisfied, either. How could Thurman have three visits with a clinician over 14 days if she wasn't nearby or able to travel on demand? If she could have traveled on demand, why was the original surgical procedure not rescheduled? This is a fairly important problem for the narrative frame presented.

There are other omissions to support the narrative frame. The first is that the law came into effect, as asserted, at Thurman's six-week mark, which was a month after Dobbs. Thurman could have acted sooner. Why didn't she? I don't know, and neither Mother Jones nor ProPublica bother to ask. Another is the hospital. Surgery was undertaken - despite the asserted concerns over legal risk - a day after Thurman was admitted. Was the hospital crowded? Was there an ER backlog? What's the hospital's track record? Are there other factors in the delay - if it was a delay - to the following afternoon that make the presence of the ban irrelevant? I don't know, but these are considerations that present obvious questions for the framing of the stories at Mother Jones and ProPublica.

So we have Mother Jones' and ProPublica's framing of Thurman's death being the fault of an abortion ban. By gathering more context and looking into it further, however, other potential frames emerge. One is that Thurman's death was due to medical malpractice by an incompetent or reckless North Carolina abortionist putting convenience over safety (or "profits over people," if you prefer old-school leftist slogans) and engaging in careless or reckless distribution of drugs. Another is one of poor planning and worse timing combined with bad luck. None of these have been litigated or proven, though any are a conclusion that could easily be drawn from the facts available. Mother Jones, ProPublica and the rest of the political (and politcized) press, however, isn't interested in leading a reader to the "wrong" conclusion.

Mother Jones' and ProPublica's articles aren't about the death of a woman and the orphan she left behind (she had a young son). The articles are about assigning blame for her death. The framing of the stories, as well as the writing style, makes that perfectly clear. The blame is obvious inside that frame: the Enemy Party, which hates women and wants them to die. Maintaining that frame is easy: just don't read too closely and don't consider looking for any kind of further context. Mother Jones is happy to help you with that.

Set aside any lies or implications. Even if everything in every article is true, the articles are still deliberately manipulative. The frame is determined first, then the facts are inserted to support the frame. Facts that don't support the frame are omitted. Context that could lead a reader to question the frame is omitted. Nuance is forbidden. Subtlety is excised.

This is how public opinion is directed and consent is manufactured. This is the purpose of journalism.