Why Doesn't the Media Take a Look at Whether Bush Arranged an Abortion For His Girlfriend in 1971?

By MARC MCDONALD

These days, George W. Bush gets lots of brownie points from fundamentalist Christians over his "Pro-Life" stance. Indeed, Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, John Roberts, almost certainly sounds the death knell for Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that effectively overturned all state laws outlawing abortion.

Given the current political climate, this might be a good time for the media to pull its thumb out of its ass and finally get around to examining a murky story from Bush's past that's remained in the shadows for three decades.

According to the story, in 1971, Bush got his then-girlfriend, a woman named Robin Lowman (now Robin Garner) pregnant and then arranged for her to have an abortion. (Note that in 1971, abortions were illegal in Texas).

In 2000, publisher Larry Flynt tried to encourage the media to examine this bombshell story. But, predictably, he got nowhere. The same mainstream media that gave 18 months of saturation, around-the-clock coverage to the Monica Lewinsky story, refused to touch the Bush/abortion story.

This is the same media that never tires of giving acres of coverage to smutty, sleazy topics like the ridiculous Janet Jackson/Super Bowl "controversy." Who's the real smut peddler these days: Flynt (who once took a bullet for the First Amendment) or the corporate controlled, cowardly U.S. media?

It's downright eerie and Orwellian, the way the Bush/abortion story has been consistently ignored and even covered up by our nation's media. Few Americans have even heard of this story.

One interesting episode on CNN a few years back neatly sums the media's approach to this story. On November 7, 2000, Flynt briefly spoke about the Bush/abortion case during an appearance on CNN's "Crossfire." Bizarrely, CNN later deleted Flynt's comments from the show's official transcripts, in an unprecedented move that indicates that the media in this country have received orders from their corporate owners to not touch this story.

Flynt was later interviewed on the Bernie Ward radio talk show on KGO radio in San Francisco, where he mentioned the CNN transcript issue and then lambasted the media:

"The mainstream media is scared to death of this story. They won't even check out the facts that I already have, much less ask Bush the question."

The mainstream media snoozed through this story during the 2000 election. And I suppose there's little reason that the media will look into it now.

But one thing Americans need to be aware of with Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, is that if he is appointed to the high court, Roe v. Wade is history. To get an idea of where Roberts stands on Roe v. Wade, it's important to note that he was listed as a coauthor on a brief before the high court in the Rust v. Sullivan case in 1991, which stated the following:

"We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

It seems that Bush has come a long ways in his position on abortion since the 1970s. Talk about being a flip-flopper.