Whenever a new study comes out, there’s a race of press statements trying to stake claim on the findings. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. Both sides always claim they are responsible for the cause. Statistics can be manipulated to say anything.

Case in point: the Guttmacher Institute study on abortion. Bottom line that this is good news. Is anyone callous enough to say that it’s a bad thing that fewer abortions are preformed? However, what’s the cause?

Guttmacher, which is an offspring of Planned Parenthood (Sourcewatch people. They trend toward the progressive, so its not a religious right conspiracy thing) claims it’s because of drugs like the morning-after pill and better access to contraceptives.

Both points are valid. While I have moral qualms with the morning-after pill, societal views on contraception have changed since the 1970s.

Then National Right to Life releases a statement on the study. Honestly, this surprises me since they spend a lot of time attacking Guttmacher. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess.

The Guttmacher report speculates that the lower abortion rates may be due to “more women carrying unintended pregnancies to term,” implicitly acknowledging that attitudes toward abortion and pregnancy may have substantially changed.

Much of that attitudinal shift can be attributed to the efforts of National Right to Life and its state affiliates in passing legislation at the federal and state levels to protect unborn children and equip their mothers with information.

NRL is also right here. Since the 80’s the abortion debate has been a top issue in the western world. Because of them, people are aware of what abortion does. Like it or not, groups like Operation Rescue made abortion an issue. By drawing constant news coverage, more people are educated on the truth about abortion.

Furthermore, neonatal advancements have repeatedly shown that infants born within the time frame to legally abort have viable lives. Silent Scream was instrumental in breaking down the barriers that life begins at conception. Before ultrasounds, the average person couldn’t see what a child looked like in the womb. It was easier to end an inconvenient mass of human tissue. (note that the abortion crowd no longer uses that talking point.)

Who’s right? Neither side is going to agree. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW, Emily’s List, et al. would never acknowledge that their push for partial-birth abortions hurt them, and that most Americans want some type of limitation on abortions. Nor would they acknowledge that scientific advancements show that all unborn deserve the right to live.

On the other hand, National Right to Life is driven by right-wing Christians. Large portions of fundamentals believe contraception is morally wrong. There’s also the issue that unplanned pregnancies are usually caused by sex outside of marriage. If you believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, then justifying access to contraception is hard.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Abortion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.