ABC News Discovers War is Bad for Pregnant Women, Somewhere
Dozens of pregnant women are fleeing Sudan, their lives and their babies' futures in peril, ABC News reports. A tragic, if familiar, headline. Yet, when similar — or even more dire — stories emerge from Gaza, the narrative shifts, often framing the architects of displacement and destruction as merely 'responding' or 'retaliating.' The same news outlets that detail every harrowing step of these
Sudanese women will sanitize the systematic targeting of maternity wards in Gaza, funded by billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars. One might wonder why one crisis gets clear-eyed pathos while another gets geopolitics-as-usual. This isn't about ignoring Sudan's suffering; it's about exposing the double standard. When the humanitarian crisis is from a conflict the U.S. isn't actively enabling, our media
suddenly finds its conscience. The UN Population Fund states 155,000 pregnant women are facing starvation in Gaza, but we don't get daily ABC specials with pregnant women fleeing. Perhaps because critiquing Netanyahu's government (which received $3.3 billion annually in U.S. aid, according to congressional records) isn't as comfortable as lamenting a far-off tragedy without implicating ourselves.
How many 'international crises' can we stomach before we question who profits from them?