ABORTION: Laura Schlessinger, deaf and daft?
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The Deafening Silence October 18, 2007
It's been a week since The Lancet published the comprehensive
Guttmacher Institute study which found that bans on abortion fail to
reduce abortion rates. The researchers of the study also discovered
that countries where abortion is legal (and the emphasis is on
prevention rather than prosecution) experience the most dramatic
declines in abortion.
Such news should undoubtedly give pro-lifers reason for pause. What
with the endless railing about the immorality of abortion, and now it
turns out their way of thinking does nothing to actually reduce
abortions. It's only fair to give them a minute to collect themselves.
Perhaps some careful (re)consideration is in order.
But there has been nothing but silence from the "anti-abortion"
movement. There have been no press releases admitting the (now
scientifically proven) error of their ways. Nor have we heard that
anti-abortion groups are excited to discover that at least there is an
approach that succeeds in reducing the need for abortion. (Doesn't
that deserve a 'hallelujah' from the religious right?) Instead, the
"anti-abortion" movement is silent about the newly revealed "pro-
abortion" effects of their efforts.
I came across a blog about the Guttmacher study on a site called
Mirror of Justice (it's "dedicated to the development of Catholic
legal theory"). It was posted the day the report was released and was
written by Professor Eduardo Penalver of Cornell University. He wrote,
"Here's my question. If this study were true, and if it were the
case that making abortion illegal would most likely only drive it
underground, without having much effect on its actual incidence but
making it far more dangerous for women to have an abortion, would that
be a reason to rethink the Church's teachings, not on the morality of
abortion, but on the tight connection between abortion's (im)morality
and its legality? I've tried to get this conversation off the ground a
few times at MOJ, but I feel like we often get side-tracked onto the
question of abortion's morality or into the empirical question whether
studies like this one are actually correct."
Pro-lifers clearly delight in discussing the morality abortion -- all
merrily participating in the forced march to the same answer -- but
when the discussion turns to prevention they're flat out of ideas.
Those who can't do, preach. I wrote to Professor Penalver this morning
inquiring about the responses he's so far received on this anti-
abortion friendly site. He emailed back promptly to report his
"disappointment" over "the general lack of a response." And so the
silence increases in volume.
Now, to be fair, some spokespeople have spun. These few brave enough
to go public with a reaction to this devastating study are engaged in
this strategy: kill the messenger.
Randall O'Bannon, saddled with the oxymoronic title "director of
education and research" at National Right to Life, said, "These
numbers are not definitive and very susceptible to interpretation
according to the agenda of the people who are organizing the data." No
doubt Mr. O'Bannon understands how Lancet editors let the researchers'
agenda trump their science. After O'Bannon is done questioning the
validity of studies published by one of the world's renowned
scientific journals he can explain why 5 of 15 "fact sheets" on his
organization's website offer no citations and 6 of the remaining 10
use the Guttmacher Institute, the very organization he claims has an
"agenda", as a source. (Apparently a source can be both trustworthy
and untrustworthy depending on the reader's agenda!)
You'd think genuine pro-lifers would be interested in knowing what
results in low abortion rates. The fact that the only reaction that
has come from the pro-life establishment is one of disbelief, cynicism
and silence indicates that's not the case. Indeed, as we've known for
a while, this whole ugly conflict isn't really even about abortion.
For the anti-abortionists, the goal is to re-introduce the preventable
consequences to sex as a way to scare people into abstinence. If that
isn't the point, then why aren't National Right to Life staffers on a
plane right now heading to the Netherlands to learn how that country
managed to achieve the lowest abortion rates on earth? (Because it's
free birth control, comprehensive sex ed, and a universal acceptance
of sex for pleasure that did it. All solutions they appear to oppose
more than abortion.)
It's worth offering up a comparison. What if a whole movement devoted
to curing cancer insisted on only supporting techniques shown time and
again to fail? What if they supported the ones that result in the
highest cancer rates? Would it even be considered an anti-cancer
movement? It's time to clean up the semantics: Is it possible that the
"anti-abortion" is really a pro-abortion movement in disguise? (That
disguise being obstinacy.)
* * * *
Is this what the Kennebunkport, Maine family compound means when they
say "leave no child behind"? Contraceptives for 11 year olds?
"School officials on Thursday defended a decision to allow children as
young as 11 to obtain birth-control pills at a middle-school health
center...."
Maine School to Offer Contraceptives
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVGnJMjw7hzjRGVQ_yviGL9GR2CwD8SBTGB80
It looks like a conspiracy of silence for: ABORTION DECLINES
WORLDWIDE, FALLS MOST WHERE ABORTION IS BROADLY LEGAL
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2007/10/11/index.html
ABORTION FALLS MOST WHERE ABORTION IS BROADLY LEGAL
FALLS MOST WHERE ABORTION IS BROADLY LEGAL
FALLS MOST WHERE ABORTION IS BROADLY LEGAL
Unsafe Abortion Remains a Major Global Health Challenge
Laura Schlessinger has limited subjects for her recycled rhetoric.
ABORTION is on top... will she counter this with her "science"? Or
ignore it completely?
Does she care:
Unsafe Abortion Remains a Major Global Health Challenge
Peacenik
news:1192750633.9...@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
>
> But there has been nothing but silence from the "anti-abortion"
> movement. There have been no press releases admitting the (now
> scientifically proven) error of their ways.
Of course not. Because their goal is not the ending of abortion, but the
subjugation of women.