The Associated Press is notably the most used stylebook used by news outlets of all political affiliations and influences how many journalists choose to word and frame various issues. The news organization’s updated abortion guidelines include advising journalists to use the terms “abortion rights” and “anti-abortion,” while foregoing other terms like “pro-life, pro-choice, or pro-abortion.”
The organization additionally advises journalists against using the term “abortionist” because it supposedly “connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.” However, the dictionary definition of “abortionist” is listed plainly as “one who induces abortions.”
The stylebook states that the term “late-term abortion” should not be used to define an abortion carried out late in a pregnancy. Live Action News notes that the Associated Press has taken issue with term “despite the fact that media has used this terminology for decades to mean an abortion committed late in pregnancy, such as the second and third trimesters.”
“In fact, even abortion business websites themselves have long used that terminology, as have media outlets and the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is a pro-abortion entity and frequently changes its terminology to match its ideology,” according to the pro-life news outlet.
As far as covering pro-life laws, the Associated Press tells journalists to avoid the terms “fetal heartbeat” and “six-week abortion bans.”
Do not use the term “late-term abortion.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines late term as 41 weeks through 41 weeks and 6 days of gestation, and abortion does not happen in this period. pic.twitter.com/KjT1k9rDSS
— APStylebook (@APStylebook) December 6, 2022
“The terms are overly broad and misleading given the disagreement over details, such as what constitutes a heartbeat at varying gestational ages,” the topical guide reads.
“Advanced technology can detect a flickering as early as six weeks, when the embryo isn’t yet a fetus, and it has only begun forming a rudimentary heart. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists [ACOG] says it is not accurate to call that a heartbeat. Use the term cardiac activity instead,” the guide continues.
Live Action News deduced that the Associated Press is shifting its language to align with pro-abortion organizations like ACOG, and possibly from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which released a report in 2020 claiming that corporate media coverage of abortion is not favorable enough to the agenda of pro-abortion activists.
“The Associated Press is gaslighting as policy in joining the pretense that changing definitions changes facts” and is “putting pro-abortion politics over facts, to weaponize discourse,” Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life of America told the outlet.
“Despite what the heartless misinformation team at the AP says, ALL heartbeats involve an electrical impulse, putting all of humankind in the same category, born or pre-born,” Hamrick continued.
