Orwellian Reporter: 'Planned Parenthood Means Fewer Abortions' [Newspeak Dictionary Update]

Newsbusters ^ | 8/24/15 | Bryan Ballas

[markomalley]

With Planned Parenthood’s back against the wall following the advent of more videos exposing the selling of baby parts, their apologists are growing desperate in their attempts to prevent its defunding. Case in point is Michael Specter, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former New York Times and Washington Post reporter, who spreads the usual counterintuitive spin that defunding Planned Parenthood would actually increase abortions. The headline was "Planned Parenthood Means Fewer Abortions."

A few years ago, Specter wrote a book called Denialism about the dangers of science denial. But he’s in a case of Planned Parenthood denial.

If only we could find an organization that educates young girls, and boys, about the dangers of early and unwanted pregnancies; a group that distributes contraceptives but also stresses the fact that sexual abstinence is safe, free, and, when used continuously, always prevents pregnancy. That group could really lower the abortion and teen-age pregnancy rates in this country. Oh. Wait. We have that organization. It’s called Planned Parenthood.

Yes, Planned Parenthood offers abortions—which are legal in the United States. Nonetheless, according to Planned Parenthood, just three percent of its services involve abortions. The vast majority of those services are devoted to the organization’s more central goal—helping people avoid unwanted pregnancy altogether.

Perhaps Specter should consult his old Washington Post colleagues on how that three-percent propaganda number isn't, well, scientifically accurate.

Specter is apparently content with entrusting the sex education and unwanted pregnancy initiatives to a group that advices young people to engage in recreational sex play that involves defecating and urinating on sexual partners, viewing “educational pornos,” and role playing as babies during sex while dressing in diapers. This just screams sexual restraint.

He then throws in a bunch of statistics to indicate that abortions, teen pregnancy, and birth rates throughout the nation are at an all time low. “Fewer pregnant teens also means fewer abortions.” He then attempts to credit this phenomenon to Planned Parenthood and bash abortion laws all at the same time.

Could it be that education works? The U.S still has the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the developed world. But it is hard to understand how more restrictive abortion laws would reduce the need for abortions. Clearly, however, better access to birth control and sex education has made significant impacts on unwanted pregnancies. The rate of abortions among adolescents in the U.S. is the lowest it has been since abortions became legal, in 1973. The numbers have fallen by two-thirds since 1988.

It's an ideologue, not a science-lover, who makes the outrageous claim that restrictive abortion laws do nothing to end the “need for abortions.”

Specter goes on to make the bizarre claim that we need Planned Parenthood (300,000-plus abortions committed a year) to make abortion rare:

“teen-age pregnancies cost this country well over ten billion dollars a year in lost tax revenues and increased spending on many forms of public assistance. Stripping the funding from Planned Parenthood, as Jeb Bush and other Republicans have proposed, would add to the burden. You don’t have to be particularly insightful to see where that will lead: more abortions.

This is like arguing we subsidize McDonald's as an obvious cure for childhood obesity. Of course, a defense for Planned Parenthood would not be complete without an attack an abstinence-only sex education.

As it happens, the Bush family has a track record when it comes to depriving people of contraceptives and even of the opportunity to learn about them. George W. Bush’s Administration was devoted to the idea that abstinence was the only solution to pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and, of course, abortion….In fact, almost every political group involved in the issue supports abstinence. But relying on it as the primary method of birth control is another thing entirely, because those programs often fail.

Specter’s changing the subject to liberal-pleasing nostrums, conducting no defense of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts. He concludes with this cheap shot at Republicans. “This is not only madness but expensive madness. Republicans should welcome the savings guaranteed by cost-effective sex education. The alternative is simply more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.”

Of course one wonders how a man who believes that Planned Parenthood, a group that sells baby parts like toys and teaches sexual deviancy to minors, will keep the abortion rate low is qualified to accuse anyone of “madness.”

[tbw2]

Planned Parenthood’s abortion business gives them incentive to give less effective contraception out than other service providers.

[markomalley]

Planned Parenthood’s abortion business gives them incentive to give less effective contraception out than other service providers.

The origin of the contraception business is just as ugly as the abortion business. The original purpose of both was eugenics.

With leftists determining who was worthy to have offspring.

[Mr. K]

just 3% of its services are abortions???

Oh wait... when a woman comes in and you give her

1)counceling
2)blood test
3)ultra sound
4)meds
5)breast exam prior to abortion
6)abortion
7)follow up care
8)post abotrtion physical
9) etc

it is easy to see how ONLY a percentage of all that is the actual abortion itself.

[DuncanWaring]

Fewer abortions, more infanticide.

[Old Sarge]

“Thank you for calling Planned Parenthood, how may I direct your call - Sales, Service, or Parts?”

[AMDG&BVMH]

“Thank you for calling Planned Parenthood, how may I direct your call - Sales, Service, or Parts?”

This is a great one!

[KC_Lion]

You Know F.R. is better than the Rest of The 'Net!

Accept Your Limitations And Happiness Will Follow

Donate To F.R.!

You Are No Better Than Your Friends.

[Twinkie]

The MILLIONS of babies aborted by Planned Parenthood tells me that Planned Parenthood is used a lot INSTEAD of contraception. (Eventually common sense kicks in, IF one is not of a reprobate mind.)

[cincinnati65]

From the Planned Parenthood website:

"Abstinence-Only Programs

Abstinence-only programs deny young people life-saving information by, instead:

Providing misinformation and Withholding accurate information that young people need in order to make informed choices.

Abstinence-only programs do not delay sexual initiation or lower rates of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to a 10-year government study. It's no wonder the Institute of Medicine called for the termination of abstinence-only programs because they represent “poor fiscal and public health policy.”

The United States wasted more than $1.5 billion in federal and state funding on abstinence-only programs from 1996 to 2008 — programs that fail to teach teens how to prevent pregnancy or STIs.

Learn more on our sex education page."

Oh yeah! Planned Parenthood does a great job of teach abstinence as a reasonable birth control method for young people.

[heartwood]

Fool-proof contraception (IUDs and implants) reduces abortion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/science/colorados-push-against-teenage-pregnancies-is-a-startling-success.html?_r=0

“The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “

These contraceptives may cause an early embryo to be unable to implant, but I can’t find out at what rate - not sure there are any clear studies. And it does not harden the heart the way aborting a known pregnancy does.

They are not what I would want for myself or my daughters.

[surroundedbyblue]

I give anesthesia for a living. The hospital system I work for has a very busy women’s hospital. I don’t usually work at that particular one, but a few years back, they were short staffed and I was sent to work there. As a Catholic, I would not participate in the latterm abortions that they would do, however, I personally had two cases where we removed IUDs and there was an undeveloped, obviously dead, baby attached.

Those things are just as evil as a surgical abortion. People just feel better about them because they can’t see it happening, but the outcome is the same.