I use Mediaite to track down ethics stories occasionally, though not nearly as much as I did when the site tried to achieve some degree of balance. Now, as part of the site’s contribution to the Axis’s panic operation, Mediaite is almost all Trump or GOP-bashing, all the time.

Yesterday it featured this story: “Witness Tells Off Republican Senator in Hearing on Abortion: ‘Don’t Ask a Question If You Don’t Want to Know the Answer’” The Senator in question was Sen. John Kennedy (R-La), particularly reviled by progressives because of his skill at making unqualified Biden nominees, usually of the DEI variety, reveal themselves as the fools and hypocrites they are. One reading that headline is supposed to assume that a pro-abortion witness bested the Senator. Far from it.

The exchange began with Kennedy asking a witness regarding late-term abortions, “Should the mother at that juncture have the right – clearly a viable child – to abort the child?” The witness dodged the question by pronouncing the scenario “unlikely.”

Kennedy turned to another witness on the panel before the committee, Jocelyn Frye, the president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “My example’s not unrealistic,” Kennedy said. “I wanna save my time. If your answer’s gonna be, ‘That never happens,’ let me go to Ms Frye. What do you think?”

Frye responded:

“Well, Senator, first of all, if you– don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer. But I’m saying to you, Senator, 1%, 1% of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later. So, I think the premise of your question sets up a conversation about abortion that is unfair. It is rarely, is that ever the instance. Most, the vast majority of pregnancies and abortions that are considered late in a pregnancy have to do with severe, devastating medical circumstances. And I understand your point, Senator. I understand your point. But with all due respect, I also think the chances of people sort of getting all the way through a pregnancy and just sort of saying, “I don’t want it,” is disrespectful to women.”

Yes, that’s the response that Mediaite’s reporter believes was a coup de grace on Kennedy.

What the episode really shows is how abortion advocates can’t and won’t discuss the issue honestly. Kennedy’s question was clear: Should a mother have the right to abort a viable child in a late term abortion? “It’s an unlikely scenario” isn’t an answer, it’s a dodge. Should a mother have a right to eat her child? Should a mother have a right to behead a neglectful father? Burn down her house to get insurance to support her drug habit? The answers to those question are all “no, of course not! “They are unlikely scenarios ” is irrelevant to the questions.

Fry’s answer, impressively, was even worse, as well as snotty and obnoxious. Kennedy didn’t like the evasive answer because it wasn’t an answer at all. So what if 1% of abortions are late term? 1%, 20%, it doesn’t matter: should there be a right to kill a viable child or not? No jurisprudence in existence holds that a crime that is sufficiently rare isn’t a crime. If there is a right to late term abortions, then there is the same right to a million such abortions as there is to one.

Nor was Kennedy asking about abortions involving “severe, devastating medical circumstances.” That’s a different question he did not ask, but the one Frye preferred to answer. Then she defaulted to the “How dare you!” dodge, and played the sexism card. It’s “disrespectful to women” to refer to conduct that some women have, do and will engage in if they can.

Jocelyn Frye unethically and dishonestly avoided a frank and fair response to Kennedy’s legitimate question, instead impugning him for asking it while pretending that the question had been answered and that it was a question that should not be asked. She thinks it should not be asked because the abortion movement has no ethical answer for that query. If the answer is no, then they have conceded the need for limits on the right to abortion. If they answer “yes,” then the jig is up: killing viable human beings is part of the agenda. The ends justify the means.

Mediate’s framing of the exchange and the issue is signature significance for an untrustworthy, biased hive of hacks.

Now read the comments. This is why Mediaite produces such junk.