
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990                   TAG: 9007290227
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MANY ISSUES HAVE NEVER BEEN COVERED

Activists on both sides say media coverage of the abortion issue generally has improved of late, but they still think critical issues go largely uncovered. Many reporters agree. The moral implications of the abortion debate, in particular, are generally ignored or treated superficially in newspapers.

Perhaps that is why the most thoughtful stories on the moral dilemma of abortion generally have been done by magazines, most notably by Jason DeParle last year in the Washington Monthly and by Mary Gordon last spring in The Atlantic.

Abortion opponents cite the possible economic impact of abortion as another area that the media - newspapers, magazines and television - have generally ignored. What would the state of the U.S. economy be today, they ask, if any of the more than 20 million fetuses aborted since the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision were now alive?

Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington says the media should write about the effect all these potential consumers and workers might ultimately have on the "looming labor shortage," the closure of some schools and future of Social Security.

Since poor people have a disproportionately large number of abortions, one also could ask what the effect of legalization might be on the tax base, welfare rolls and other social programs.

And what, for that matter, is the psychological effect of legalized abortion on our society? Since liberals often argue that capital punishment contributes to a climate of violence and a cheapening of human life, conservatives would like to see the media examine whether abortion has had the same effect. After all, the United States, which has one of the highest abortion rates in the Western world, also has one of the highest murder rates in the Western world. Is there a connection?

The analogy may be invalid, the connection non-existent, but few in the media have even raised the question.

by CNB