Posted on 05/28/2005 7:20:32 AM PDT by Former Fetus
Myth that Abortions Increased Under Bush Dismantled By Unlikely Source
If you remember your high school Greek mythology class, one of the most intriguing tales remains as relevant today as it was when written thousands of years ago. It is the myth of Sisyphus.
Sisyphus angered one of the many Greek gods and he was condemned to push a stone up a hill for all of eternity. Beyond the physical pain and labor, an extra soul-sapping punishment was added. Each time he managed to get the rock to the top, it would roll back down the hill. Endless frustration and disappointment was Sisyphus’s eternally unhappy lot.
Sometimes we feel that way. There have been a number of occasions when a particularly egregious (and effective) pro-abortion lie was confronted and rebutted by sources other than pro-lifers.
This has occurred several times with the monumentally misleading myth that Roe and Doe legalized abortion ONLY in the first three months. But it continues to resurface even in places which previously had admitted that Roe and Doe essentially legalized abortion on demand for the entire pregnancy.
The latest example of a lie embedding itself in the media's collective consciousness came last year when Glen Harold Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, published an on-its-face incoherent/incomplete/inaccurate article that insisted that the number of abortions had increased under President George W. Bush. We cannot get inside Prof. Stassen’s heart or mind, so we can’t know whether his counterintuitive argument is the product of laziness, ineptitude, or was driven by politics.
What we do know is that Stassen’s conclusion zipped around the Internet, launched from the web page of Sojourners, a decidedly liberal, anti-Bush Christian magazine--coincidentally, a month before the 2004 elections. Along with a separate article that appeared in the New York Times by another author, the effect was to signal pro-lifers that it was okay to vote for pro-abortion John Kerry.
No consciences need twist as pro-lifers pulled the lever for a 100% pro-abortion politician. How could it be any worse, they suggested, when there were more babies dying under a pro-life President.
The flip-side of this decidedly counterintuitive conclusion was to pretend that the decline in abortions under pro-abortion President Bill Clinton was somehow attributable to a man whose Administration brought the abortifacient RU486 into the United States and which relentless pushed for recognition of abortion as an internationally recognized "right."
Truth: the decline in abortions began in earnest under the first President Bush. Its momentum carried over into the early years of the Clinton Administration, but by the last years of Clinton's second term, there was virtually no decline. The very first year of the second President Bush's first term, the decline picked up again–-the very opposite of the pro-abortionists’ claim.
When Prof. Stassen’s article appeared on Sojourners, along with a follow-up piece he co-wrote for the Houston Chronicle, NRLC’s Director of Education Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon thoughtfully critiqued their inadequacies, mistakes, and mysterious leaps in logic. His analysis received some publicity, but it did not derail the Lie.
Indeed, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a speech in January, reiterated it in a slightly more cautious way. She reiterated the idea that abortions had decreased under her husband and had increased, at least in several states, under President Bush. It was hard to miss the inference that the increase was likely nationwide.
A few days later, Kerry picked up the mantra in an appearance of Meet the Press. Kerry told host Tim Russert, “And do you know that in fact abortion has gone up in these last few years with the draconian policies that Republicans have...[etc.].”
But that was nothing compared to the comments of Democratic Committee National Chairman Howard Dean on Meet the Press last weekend: "You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was President?" Later in the week, Sen. Clinton returned to the scene of her verbal crime, telling CNN, "during the Clinton administration, abortions went down, and they've gone back up under the Bush administration. . ."
And then help came from a highly unlikely source, one with a vested interest in protecting the “right” to abortion.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) is a “special research affiliate” of Planned Parenthood. All sides agree, regardless of AGI’s pedigree, it produces the most accurate abortion numbers, partly because of its close working relationship with the abortion industry.
May 19 AGI released a report that showed the annual abortion figures dropped from 1,313,000 in 2000 to 1,293,000 in 2002. This was an invaluable corrective. You have to read this carefully to understand how many lives saved this represents.
The decline the first year (from 2000 to 2001) was 10,000--from 1,313,000 to 1,303,000. For the second year (2001-2002), the figure dropped to 1,293,000--20,000 fewer than the number of abortions in 2000. Thus the total number of lives saved for that two-year period was 10,000+ 20,000= 30,000.
The abortion rate, which AGI measures as the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 as of July 1 of each year, also dropped from 21.3 to 20.9 in that same period of time.
Likewise, according to AGI, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth) dropped from 24.5 in 2000 to 24.2 in 2002, the lowest abortion ratio Guttmacher has reported since 1974. Whoa!
AGI was not the only source outside the pro-life community to debunk Prof. Stassen’s analysis. There is the recent analysis done by the Annenberg Political Fact Check, which runs the site www.factcheck.org. Factcheck has a well-deserved reputation for cutting through the fog to reveal the truth.
If you go to Abortions Raising under Bush" you will find this piece. Not true. How that false claim came to be --and lives on." I will mention just a highlight or two because you must read this short but devastating analysis for yourself.
Under “Summary,” the reader finds this: “Politicians from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Howard Dean have recently contended that abortions have increased since George W. Bush took office in 2001.
“This claim is false. It's based on an opinion piece [Stassen’s] that used data from only 16 states. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 43 states found that abortions have actually decreased. Update, May 26: The author of the original claim now concedes that the Guttmacher study is ‘significantly better’ than his own.”
Anyone who watches Howard Dean in action knows his contempt for those who disagree with him is boundless. Keeping his anger and his derision in check is a full-time job for the new DNC Chairman. He also treats facts as if they are silly putty that can be shaped to fit the situation.
This is certainly the case with abortion, and not just in his Meet the Press comments from last Sunday. Where in the world did Dean get the idea that abortions had gone up a whopping 25% under Bush? Glad you asked, even more happy Factcheck asked.
“We asked the Democratic National Committee repeatedly where Dean got his 25 percent figure, but we got no response. Even if Stassen's estimate of 52,000 additional abortions were correct, that would figure to an increase of less than 4 percent. And in any case the rate is going down, not up, according to the most authoritative figures [from AGI] available."
One other item. It is to AGI’s credit that “Stassen's numbers, and the widespread acceptance they seemed to be getting, prompted the Guttmacher Institute to conduct a special analysis to update its comprehensive census of abortion providers for the year 2000,” according to Factcheck. “The increases that Stassen reported ‘would be a significant change in a long-standing trend in the US,’ Leila Darabi of the institute explained to Factcheck.”
AGI then produced a report whose headline said it all: “DECADES-LONG DECLINE IN NUMBER AND RATE OF U.S. ABORTIONS CONTINUES, NEW ANALYSIS SHOWS.”
Please save this edition of TN&V along with the actual report from factcheck.org. You also want to keep AGI’s conclusion, found at Today's News & Views
We don’t want this rock rolling back down the hill.
Howard Dean: Professional Twit!
Thanks, FF. I've been looking for something like this since I heard all of the Clinton, Kerry and then Dean remarks on the increase in abortions under Bush. I could think of no rational reason why that would be so. Even if there were "draconian policies", which there are not, it makes no sense that people would be rushing out in droves to get abortions. I guess the suggestion is that not wanting condom instruction and provision in our middle and high schools is draconian, causing a rise in teen pregnancies and thus a rise in abortions. This, it is obvious, is not what is happening, and I believe I have seen articles stating that there is a decreasing rate of teen pregnancies. So the whole thing makes no sense.
Sojourners no less. Why but aren't they a Christian organization? /sarcasm
Jim Wallis is one of the most dangerous men to the Christian faith right now, all denominations are buying into his social(ist/marxist) gospel.
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