to be angry at this Guardian headling/subheading (re. the woman denied an abortion)

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/04/baby-el-salvador-woman-abortion-dies

The subhead is 'Seriously ill woman denied a medical abortion has caesarean section at 27 weeks to save her life but baby does not survive'.

I don't know if I am reading this wrongly. I just feel that 'but baby does not survive' makes it sound as if there were another possibility.

It was always known that the baby could not survive more than a few hours at most. There was never going to be an outcome different.

I just feel that the phrasing makes it sound as if her life was saved at the expense of the baby's life, which is absolutely not the case since the baby was not able to survive.

Yup. No matter how this played out, that baby was always going to die. Awful .

It is awful.

I am well aware that women is very unlikely to be reading the Guardian (!), I just feel that it is so unnecessary to present it like that.

Just awful.

I think it's a poor choice of words and isn't intended the way it comes across. Not that that makes it ok.

I read it as "she was made to to through with a C-section where the baby died anyway so what was the point in denying her the right to the abortion in the first place"

I'm sure it wasn't intentional, yes. But so insensitive.

mrsbrown - that may be what the writer was thinking, actually. That makes sense.

I just can't help feeling for her as presumably this was a wanted baby and nothing she could have done would have changed the outcome.

that poor women.

even without her having an illness, it not right to force a women to continue a pregnancy that will result in a baby unable to live outside the womb.

I interpreted it the same as MrsBrown.

If anything, it's a dig at the people who denied her an abortion and forced her to go through with a c-section.

Without the "but baby does not survive" part, it would read as if she was denied an abortion but had a successful c-section.

Horrid story, poor woman :(

I think the point is that she was denied a medical abortion earlier. If the baby had a chance of surviving there might be a reason for them to deny the abortion.

Typical male-dominated top-down health service incident I would say.

I think it is a strange choice of headline wording and agree you could interpret it two ways - either that the story was the baby not surviving (inevitable given the circumstances, sadly), or that the headline was commenting on the utter futility of requiring a woman to go through all of that.

That poor, poor woman.

I think that it must have been a tough head line to write, in terms of pleasing every objection that could of been put forward.

The only thing in it's defence, is that the article explains the situation well and most who read the guardian, read what is written, not just headlines.

Oh, I feel better that several people interpret it the other way, as that is much better.

I just had a knee-jerk reaction to it. But of course, it will have been ery hard to write.

I do agree the article is well written. I just reckon if you didn't know the story, you might not understand what was being said initially.

I think it's a good point though that Guardian readers would be expected to read the story. It's not really a 'sensational headline and big photo' type of paper.

True, yes.

(This is a very civilized AIBU, btw, thanks very much all for not replying with 'you idiot, of course it means xxxx')

That baby was never going to survive. How could it without a brain? At least the woman's life has been saved.

The headline and the sub-heading were probably written by a sub editor, not the journalist too, so were assuming that the readers did not know the story behind the headline, and were saving those who only wanted to know what happened to the baby to have their curiosity satisfied, without having to read the whole story.

It's a bit odd for the Guardian to do this, but they were possibly pandering to their website readers, rather than their subscribers. If that makes sense to you.

Maybe they did it in a hurry due to deadlines?

You can write to the paper - they have a reader's editor I think.

It can be difficult to get that sort of thing across accurately in a headline but do email the reader's editor. I've found them to be pretty responsive to concerns, and it will help them do better next time they cover a story of this type.

This case was horrific. That poor woman :(

And agree that the headline must have been incredibly difficult to write.