In August, Rachel Sherman reported on how abortion rights have been threatened around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the rejection of a prominent U.S. right-wing pundit by his followers is shedding light on how a mix of anti-abortion politics and Trumpism has fueled a revolt in the conservative media.

In 1999, Matt Drudge was a rising star on the American right. With his eponymous web publication, the Drudge Report, he had pioneered a new form of aggregative political journalism. Still basking in the fame he had won by breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal the year before, he got into an ugly public dispute with Fox News, to which he was a regular contributor.

After he notified the TV channel of his intention to broadcast a photograph of a fetus undergoing surgery as evidence for his criticism of late-term abortions — a completely different procedure — the network forbade its use. Enraged, Drudge canceled his appearance and published a headline on the Drudge Report that read “I WILL NOT BE CENSORED!”

But that was 20 years ago. Since then, the conservative media landscape that Drudge helped to create has shifted so far under his feet that Fox News’ most prominent anchor recently denounced him as “firmly a man of the progressive left.” And now, a group of anti-abortion activists has launched a publication modeled on the Drudge Report, but aimed at those “tired of” its “leftward tilt.”