The NYT ran a front page article today on the passage of laws limiting abortion in recognition that an unborn child feels pain at 20 weeks. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/us/27abortion.html
While the article is better than most NYT pieces on abortion as far as trying to be even handed (I know this is faint praise), the reporter omits some important facts.
1) The Times states that the US Supreme Court has recognized viability as occuring at 24 weeks. Actually twenty-two years ago the Court recognized that viability could occur as early as 23 1/2 weeks and that there could be as much as a 4-week error in estimating gestational age. Webster, 492 U.S. at 554.
2) The Times fails to explain that the bills date the pregnany from fertilization, rather than gestation. This means that the limitation begins at 22 gestational weeks, not 20 weeks. The increased protection is for one and a half weeks at most.
3) The article uncritcally quotes an abortion rights advocate that many of the abortions that would be prohibited are currently performed due to medical emergencies. Yet the laws all have life of the mother and health exceptions. Furthermore, we learned in a widely-publicized interview with The New York Times in 1997 with Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, the majority of cases involving abortion after 20 weeks gestation are performed on a healthy mother and healthy fetus.
4) The experience of the Deavers described in the article may have been the result of substandard care. See this analysis by a maternal-fetal health specialist. http://www.omaha.com/article/20110314/NEWS0802/703149995/-1#midlands-voices-nebraska-s-abortion-law-rests-on-sound-justification
Not exactly careful reporting by the Times, but still better than most of their stories on abortion laws.