You can watch the entire “interview” above.
The piece starts out pretty straight forward and civilly. O’Reilly asks a simple question of Ms. Walsh – does she believe that late term fetuses should have any rights or protections?
The question takes about five seconds to ask – the rest of the 9 minutes, starting with Ms. Walsh’s response, goes downhill from there. Rather than just give a simple yes or no answer, she starts giving her reasons to defend late term abortion. She does not answer the question. She gives lots of anecdotes though i.e. late term abortions make up 1% of all abortions (one of her few actual facts), she mentions late stage breast cancer, (but no stats on how many of the women seeking late term abortions are also late stage breast cancer patients) the extremely rare 9 year old rape/incest victim and of course the babies with congenital problems (which from what I can gather on the internet would be a large percentage of the late term abortions).
O’Reilly concedes that abortions for life of the mother is available in hospitals all over the country. Ms. Walsh replies that that is the reason for most late term abortions. That may or may not be true, but I will say that online, in blogs and message forums most of the examples of late term abortions I find are for babies with congenital problems that the parents want to terminate instead of deal with after birth. If most late term abortions are to save the life of the mother, those women are not being as well represented online. Personally, I can only think of one blogger.
At about a minute 20 seconds into the interview, the discussion remains civil. O’Reilly does mention the ad hominem attacks Ms. Walsh has made against him at Salon.com and he tells her she is wrong, but still in a controlled voice and manner.
Then it starts to get a little irritating. O’Reilly quotes some statistics about George Tiller’s practice. Tiller performed 60,000 abortions and charged $6000. Ms. Walsh wants to quibble on the price which she thought was $5000, but O’Reilly takes the opportunity to point out that the price had recently gone up and that Tiller didn’t do pro bono work. Point O’Reilly.
Now what I like about O’Reilly at 2 minutes 6 seconds is that he is arguing with the facts. He has looked at the records and knows what Tiller charged and that there were no freebies. While Ms. Walsh disputes this she can’t back up her point and then wants to argue that it is not a matter of concrete fact but a difference of world views! Either Tiller charged thousands of dollars for the services he provided for the majority of cases, or he didn’t. It’s either a fact or it is not a fact. And Walsh shoots herself in the foot when she admits she didn’t examine the records the state of Kansas compiled against Tiller, but merely “skimmed them.” Again – point O’Reilly.
At 2:49 into the interview, O’Reilly once more asks Ms. Walsh if she believes that late term fetuses should have any rights at all. Once again Ms. Walsh wants to dance with her “save the life of the mother” strawman, which O’Reilly quickly shoots down. Life of the mother isn’t on the table. No one is arguing that point. O’Reilly then quickly takes the opportunity to point out that Tiller was performing abortions for “casual reasons” and not “life of the mother. When Walsh admits she hadn’t seen any evidence of that, she walked right into O’Reilly’s trap. But she doesn’t go easily. She doesn’t know that Tiller performed abortions for casual reasons, but she mentions she knows women who suffered tragedy (not give any specifics).
3:25 it starts getting ugly and O’Reilly tells Ms. Walsh to stop talking. At that point I was hoping someone would quit talking. I hate it when both sides try to talk over each other and you can’t hear either side. But again I think Ms. Walsh was handling her self badly. For someone who has watched O’Reilly on the Factor she should have known how to present herself better. Her answers should have been straightforward and factual. As O’Reilly ALWAYS gives his guests the last word, she would have had that time for any extra rhetoric. But what she did was enrage the host (which was also uncomfortable to watch). I wish he could have been a bit more civil to her instead of telling her to quit talking, but on the other hand, she wouldn’t shut up and kept going over the same rhetoric she’s been using throughout the interview so far to avoid questions. So maybe O’Reilly didn’t have a choice. I’m calling this segment a draw.
It’s at this point that he presents the interview with Dr. Paul McHugh, retired head of psychiatry from Johns Hopkins. Dr. McHugh backs O’Reilly’s contention that abortions were performed for nonlife threatening reasons such as wanting to attend a concert, play sports, or not give a baby up for adoption. Now in my opinion – this was a slam dunk for O’Reilly. He has proven that Tiller performed abortions for non life threatening reasons.
Ms. Walsh’s response is maddening.
I don’t necessarily know what makes those men better judges of these women’s conditions than Dr. Tiller. Bill we live in different worlds, you believe your experts and I believe mine.
I think most people would recognize that playing sports, attending a concert or not wanting to pursue adoption proceedings are not life threatening conditions and by not acknowledging that Ms. Walsh looks like a fool. Point O’Reilly.
Walsh does get in that Tiller was acquitted of charges and says what he did was legal. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had an inappropriate financial relationship with the doctor who was supposed to give second opinions prior to pregnancy termination, but he was still under investigation by the state medical board.
Thankfully, the break.
After the break at about 5:56, O’Reilly asks again if there should be any protections for fetuses and again, Ms. Walsh doesn’t want to answer directly. Now, she does say she believes that the law should be what it is, but if that is true, and most late term abortions should be for the life of the mother, that would negate Tiller’s casual non life threatening reasons for abortion. At 6:21 she finally opines that she is not alright with the fetus getting any kind of national protection – if she had only fessed up to that at the beginning, this might have only been a 3 minute interview. But nontheless, it could have ended on a civil note here. If only…
Ms. Walsh wants to go off on a ridiculous analogy between gun dealers and abortionists. Last time I checked the right to have guns is a constitutional one, and the right to abortion hinges on a badly formed supreme court ruling. Big difference. Of course the real reason Mrs. Walsh brings this up at all is because she wants to lay the blame to Tiller’s murder on the hands of O’Reilly because he reported on Tiller’s practice extensively over the past five years.
At 6:53 Walsh floors me! She acknowledges that we have freedom of speech, but then says that is a legal right that many people “think should not be.” I don’t think I have her exact point because much of this is said while speaking over O’Reilly. Does she mean that we shouldn’t have freedom of speech, or that certain types of speech should be censored? As the “discussion” continues I think she means that any type of public criticism or harsh talk against abortion doctors should be illegal.
I couldn’t help but think of the rigmarole going on this week about Sarah Palin and the David Letterman jokes. I wonder what Ms. Walsh’s stand on smearing the reputation of young women (albeit with a spritz of humor) would be.
The free for all starts at 7:23. Walsh points out that Tiller was running a legal facility. Would have been great of O’Reilly could have mentioned that he was still under investigation at the time of his death, but it never happened because of ensuing war of words and flying ad hominems.
7:37 Walsh admits to being a “pro-choice” Catholic. Well, she’s pro-choice and she self-identifies as a Catholic. But she’s not a faithful, devout practicing catholic because you can’t be both.
at 7:50 she tells O’Reilly, “Don’t demonize me my friend because you’ll be sorry.”
That’s a threat. I’m wondering what that means exactly. O’Reilly has bigger reach and audience than she does. I guess if O’Reilly meets an unfortunate accident we know where to look first? Not something very smart to say on national t.v.
On the other hand I laughed out loud with this zinger from O’Reilly. “You made this guy out to be Dr. Welby.” For my younger readers – this is Dr. Welby. It’s a cultural literacy reference.
8:30 – Walsh finally admits she sees Dr. Tiller was a hero. O’Reilly does the fist pump thing. I’m thinking this whole thing could have been over with three minutes ago if the questions were just answered succinctly! It’s never the answer that gets guests in trouble on the O’Reilly Factor- it’s the pontification.
O’Reilly pretty much gives her the last 26 seconds or so – which she kind of wastes. It’s a case of giving someone enough rope (or air time)…
Final wrap up and update here.
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