FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK.(legal status of abortion)(Brief Article)

A high school student wishing to inform herself on the legal status of abortion might reach for the 2001 New York Times Almanac. In the "U.S. Health and Medicine - Abortion" section (page 370) she would find this: "The deliberate termination of a pregnancy before the fetus is capable of living outside the womb has generally been legal in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled (in Roe v. Wade) that abortions cannot be prohibited during the first three months of pregnancy."

This high school student would not find in the almanac a reference to a 1983 report from a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee concluding that "no significant legal barriers of any kind whatsoever exist today in the United States for a woman to obtain an abortion for any reason during any stage of her pregnancy."

In fairness to the New York Times, I should point out that its editorial news policy on the description of Roe has changed. Responding to a letter from our legislative director, Douglas Johnson, an assistant to the editor announced on July 26, 1982--nine years after Roe v. Wade--the New York Times' new policy: "After examining the substance of your point, our National News editor is promulgating a memorandum for our national desk and our Washington Bureau instructing our editors and reporters that brief references to the Supreme Court's 1973 decision on abortion should say simply that the Court legalized abortion. As you indicate, the phrase `in the first three months of pregnancy' might be incorrectly interpreted to mean that abortions in the last six months of pregnancy remain illegal." And for the most part, the Times has stuck to this policy in its newspaper reporting.

That the editors of the New York Times Almanac, which is a widely sold reference book, have not yet caught up with the policy established in 1982 raises some questions. If the almanac's editors actually believe that their version of Roe v. Wade is correct, then they are seriously misinformed--a sign of incompetence. (The list of contributors includes seven researchers and fact checkers.) If they agree that it is misleading but spread it anyway, then they are deliberately misinforming--a journalistic crime.

The New York Times Almanac's misrepresentation of Roe is equivalent to a description of the First Amendment as "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press," without mentioning the parts establishing religious freedom and the rights to freedom of speech and association and the right to petition the government. While the truncated rendition of the amendment is "correct," it is also totally misleading.

Ironically, the journalistic impulse to report facts isn't completely suppressed in the almanac. The second paragraph in the "Abortion" section of the 2001 New York Times Almanac states that 12% of abortions are legally done after the first trimester, implying that the preceding description of Roe v. Wade is inaccurate.

Also, a curious reader of the almanac ...