The Biased . . . and the Confused

I was poking around pro-life responses to the declining abortion rate when I found this Catholic Online article.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were less than 17 abortions for every 1,000 women in 2011. The figure is down approximately 13% from 2008, and nearly half of what it was in 1980 when the greatest number of abortions were recorded at almost 30 per 1,000 women. . . .

Unfortunately, the Guttmacher Institute has a glaring anti-life agenda. The Institute is infamously known to be a front organization for Planned Parenthood. As such, the statistics are naturally suspect.

I get that things have biases. I really do. But that something has a bias is a reason to be wary and double check its results, not a reason to just call it biased and reject it. And that’s an important distinction.

The Guttamcher Institute only credits contraceptives and the relative ease of their availability as the reason why these numbers have dropped. They also claim that the decline in the abortion rate is not connected to a bevy of laws passed in recent years outlawing abortion after 20 weeks. Nor do they acknowledge the closures of clinics that have been ruled unsafe for mothers seeking abortion, under the law.

The Institute also insists that “back-alley” abortions still occur in unknown numbers.

When you consider the whopping claims, that the law has no impact on the abortion rate, and that there must be an epidemic of back-alley abortions continuing today, the agenda of the Guttmacher Institute becomes blatant. So while any decrease in abortions may be cause to celebrate, the decrease reported by Guttmacher Institute actually means it’s time to double down on every effective pro-life effort.

The study addressed this. It stated that the number of abortion providers decreased 4% between 2008 and 2011, that the number of clinics dropped 1%, that most of the recent abortion restrictions were passed after the 2010 midterms and therefore did not have an affect on the period studied. It stated that these small decreases in providers could not explain the 13% drop in the abortion rate. This is why it pays to read.

The Guttmacher Institute would like to see the repeal of laws that are designed to protect mothers who seek abortions, and they are also in favor of mass expansion of access to contraceptives, including for underage girls. They refer to this pushing as “choice.”

Oh really now? Catholic Online now wants to promote safe abortion access? I think not. If you’re going to pass abortion restrictions in an effort to cut down on the number of women having abortions, at least be honest about it.

The reality is still quite grim. Despite some successes on the pro-life front, abortion is still legal in all 50 states, forty years after Roe v. Wade. Additionally, one abortion per 1,000 women is one abortion too many. If the figure is truly at 16.9 per 1,000 women, that is still 16.9 abortions per 1,000 women to many.

Perhaps the most accurate way to look at this, is that for every 1,000 pregnant women, at least 17 babies are still murdered within the womb.

And . . . here is where the people being all suspicious of Guttmacher’s statistics fail at statistics. It’s not 17 abortions per 1000 pregnant women, it’s 17 abortions per 1000 women. Not all women are pregnant.

And the explosion of contraceptives, including abortifacients, is also leading to an unknown number of abortions, which go unreported. Oftentimes, the mothers who are taking these drugs have no idea they may also be poisoning their newly-conceived babies.

In other words, this is the idea that if you take the pill, you’re causing mini abortions. I’ve addressed this already, so I’ll just link to that post.

Finally, there’s the issue of all the children who cannot be conceived because sexually active men and women are using contraceptive devices to interfere with God’s loving plan for all people.

Now we move beyond grieving for aborted fetuses and beyond grieving for zygotes to grieving for imaginary possible children never conceived. I see. Personally, I would rather try to make this world a better place for the children who already exist. We can worry about imaginary possible children when all the actual existing children have good food, clean water, and healthy living conditions.

Ultimately, while the statistics may receive wide acclaim in the media, we must view them as suspicious given the blatant agenda and poor methodology of the Guttmacher Institute.

Poor methodology . . . say the people who don’t understand what the abortion rate means.

It is not time for us to ease up on the fight against legalized procured abortion in this country. Instead, it is time for us to redouble our efforts and to possibly conduct a better study so that all Americans learn the truth about abortion, rather than those lines peddled by anti-life extremists.

Because if a pro-life group does a study, it won’t be biased at all!

I’m sorry, I just . . . there is no rational conversation to be had here. And I hate it when there is no rational conversation to be had. I really, really do.