By Bill Fancher
The Alan Guttmacher Institute has released a report that shows overall declines in the number of abortions. And while pro-life groups are glad to hear about such “declines,” they are leery of the Institute's intentions.
Abortions have been on a steady decline through the 1990s, the report says. According to the study, there were 1.3 million abortions in the year 2000—down from the 1.4 million in 1994. And teens between the ages of 15 and 17, the report says, have seen a 39% drop in abortion in the last several years alone.
On the surface, those statistics might be an encouragement for pro-lifers and their cause. But at least two pro-life groups are warning to “consider the source.” The Guttmacher Institute, they point out, is an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion-provider in the world.
For example, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America welcomes the news, but wonders why it was released by the Institute. “The Alan Guttmacher Institute likes to be taken as a serious source for statistics,” Wright says. “So they will try and report accurately—but then oftentimes they'll put a spin on the story in order to promote their own pro-abortion, pro-sex-ed opinions.”
Ironically, she says, the statistics indicate abstinence education is effective. “Really what this study helps to show, though, is that abstinence education is working,” she says, “because it was at the time period when abstinence education started being instituted on a widespread basis [that] we see the drop in the number of out-of-wedlock teen pregnancies and abortions.”
Like Wright, Judie Brown of the American Life League is skeptical of the data in the report, which says poor women still need abortion help.
“Because they are the research arm of the Planned Parenthood of America, [the Guttmacher Institute] works toward achieving the very same goal that was established by Margaret Sanger when she founded Planned Parenthood—and that is, that the poor should have no children at all because they are quote-unquote 'unfit',” Brown says. “So I'm not at all surprised by that aspect of the [report] saying the poor have exponentially more abortions than other segments of the population.”
According to Brown, the Guttmacher figures are worthless. “I question the accuracy of any of their numbers because there is no uniform reporting requirement in all 50 states,” she says. “Many, many abortionists define 'abortion' as nothing more than a D and C [dilatation and curettage], which means it would never be counted as an abortion in the first place. And of course, all chemical abortions done by RU-486 are not tabulated.”
Abortion statistics seem to fail to take into account the fact that almost one-third of potential mothers since abortion was legalized in 1973—that is, those currently in the 16-29 age range—were aborted. Consequently, there will be numerically fewer women considering abortions as they move through their child-bearing years.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
