I once served on a jury that convicted a man of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. We all thought he did it, but we weren't sure the government had made its case. The evidence was strong but his defense attorney had done such a good job of explaining it away or striking various aspects from the record that we almost let him off.

It didn't work, but it almost did. His attorney did such a fantastic job that I remember thinking, "If I ever am accused of a crime, I want this man to represent me."

And that's how I feel about this Washington Post write-up we'll look at shortly. My thought is, "If I ever kill someone, I sure hope the Washington Post covers for me." Only problem with this plan (other than my fervent hope I never commit such an act) is that I think they may only provide this exculpatory service for abortionists.

Let's first look at the story as written up by the Journal News, a Gannett publication most recently known for publishing the home addresses of legal gun owners. The piece, "Coroner: Jennifer Morbelli bled to death following abortion," begins:

A New Rochelle woman died of complications from a late-term abortion at a Maryland clinic, the Montgomery County, Md., coroner confirmed Wednesday.

Jennifer Morbelli, 29, a schoolteacher in White Plains, bled to death after amniotic fluid in her womb spilled into her bloodstream, said Bruce Goldfarb, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Medical Examiner’s Office.

That newspaper also has a feature about how the doctor who performed the abortion was profiled in a documentary film praising late-term abortionists.

Now, Newsday's piece is headlined, lengthily, "Jennifer Morbelli, New Rochelle teacher, died of complications after abortion, medical examiner says."

The Washington Post piece, which took surprisingly long to go online (I had previously been writing about how there was no story there even many hours after it was appearing at other sites) went up late last night.

See, it takes time -- and, I guess, many phone calls with abortion rights groups to get it just right -- to write the story this way. Headline, of course, is "Md. medical examiner cites rare complication in death of woman after abortion." Then we get many, many words about how this was just a freak accident and that legalized abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy had absolutely nothing meaningful to do with the death of this young woman (never mind the dead child, of course):

A 29-year-old woman died of natural causes after visiting an abortion clinic in Montgomery County and suffering a rare complication related to childbirth, according to an initial finding by the Maryland medical examiner’s office.

Are you freaking kidding me, Washington Post? Are you freaking kidding me? CHILDBIRTH? CHILDBIRTH?

Um, pardon me. It goes on like that for another 700 words or so.

I don't quite have the heart -- or the stomach -- to fisk it. I don't know if it was actually ghostwritten by the abortion doctor involved in the death or if it just seems to have come from the press offices of an abortion-rights group. But however it came about, it is not journalism about a woman who is dead in the ground after an abortion so much as a vigorous defense of the abortionist. Why, really he's a hero of sorts and this was just something that happened to occur at the same time as a 33-week old unborn baby was untimely ripped from her mother's womb. All a misunderstanding. And did we mention the doc involved is "devastated"?

Journalism? Hard-hitting? Tough-questions? Accountability? Not so much.

In this case, all of the journalism being done on this story is being done by writers with pro-life groups -- from the very news of this woman's tragic death to the news that abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart tells patients that they should not call an Emergency Room if they need help (see the image above).

But if you want the kindest, most generous explanation of how a young woman in your care ended up dead after you performed an abortion on her, hire these people. They're really good.