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HYANNIS, Mass. — A Massachusetts mother who lost her daughter to a botched abortion in 2007 is pleading with the media to balance its news coverage in light of the May 31 murder of abortion doctor George Tiller.
Ellen Smith said she fought for months to get mainstream media outlets to cover the September death of Laura Hope Smith, who died on an abortion operating table, yet Tiller’s death brought an outpouring of national media headlines and Congressional condolences to his family by a resolution approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bereaved mother said most news reports about her daughter came from nonprofit organizations, religious news and other alternative media.
“Where was the press when my daughter Laura died at the hands of an abortionist?” Smith asked, adding that Laura’s death was finally mentioned 10 months later in one major publication, The Boston Globe, when the abortion doctor was indicted for manslaughter.
It was six weeks before her local paper, The Cape Cod Times, mentioned Laura’s death, although it sought out her mother for a two-hour interview just two days after Laura’s death. Smith says the local newspaper rationalized delaying a report on Laura’s death so it could corroborate it with an autopsy report.
“Since when has news been postponed in lieu of reporting facts except in the abortion deaths of the mothers?” Smith asked. “I have to believe that it is only because the media’s bias toward abortion determines what makes news.
“If Laura had died falling off a bike or in a car accident it would have been in the paper the next day. My daughter walked into that abortion facility healthy, and she left dead.”
Smith was 22 years old and 13-weeks pregnant when she entered the Women’s Health Center, operated by Dr. Rapin Osathanondh, a Hyannis gynecologist. According to the district attorney, Osathanondh conducted the procedure with only the assistance of a non-medically trained receptionist and sedated Smith without monitoring her vital signs.
While under investigation by the state medical board, Osathanondh permanently relinquished his medical license. He was indicted for manslaughter and is scheduled for trial in September. Smith has also filed a civil suit against the doctor alleging negligence, and that case is set to begin this summer.
In expressing her frustration, Smith said she is not minimizing the tragedy of Tiller’s murder. At the same time, though, she pointed out that as many as 60,000 viable babies are believed to have been aborted by Tiller.
“His death is a tragedy, but so are all the lives that were taken by him and the lives of over 400 women who have died as a result of an abortion,” Smith said.
“I call on the media to report deaths like Laura’s. If Tiller’s death merits national news, so does a death at the hands of an abortionist.”
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