Pro-Life Groups Call Guttmacher Study on Illegal Abortions a Propaganda Piece
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 14, 2009
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life advocates are responding to the new study disseminated by the Guttmacher Institute claiming that abortions should be legalized worldwide because of a supposed epidemic of unsafe abortions killing women. They say the study is nothing more than a propaganda piece by a group that supports abortion.
Guttmacher is formerly known as the Alan Guttmacher Institute and was an official affiliate of Planned Parenthood, where Guttmacher was a former president, until it disassociated itself with the abortion business to gain mainstream credibility.
The organization, which still advocates legalizing abortions on a global scale, issued a report yesterday claiming as many as 70,000 women die from illegal abortions.
Anthony Ozimic, the communications director for SPUC, the British pro-life group, says the Guttmacher study is false.
"The Guttmacher report is not independent academic research but propaganda from the pro-abortion lobby," he told LifeNews.com today. "The Guttmacher Institute was set up to promote abortion and contraception. The report’s acknowledgments are a roll-call of the pro-abortion lobby."
Ozimic says "Guttmacher’s figures are based on highly spurious guesstimates, which even the report itself is forced to admit."
"The pro-abortion lobby has a proven track record of exaggerating illegal abortions numbers. Abortion numbers in Britain today are many times higher than before the 1967 Abortion Act, despite ever-increasing access to birth control drugs and devices," he added.
Scott Fischbach, the head of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group with a global outreach program that has seen it promote the pro-life perspective at the United Nations, also chimed in on the report.
He says Guttmacher should be promoting medical advances and better health care in the developing nations where it says abortions should be legalized because of supposed illegal abortion problems.
"The Guttmacher Institute refuses to address the greatest need of pregnant women: good medical care. This is the most important factor in reducing maternal mortality," Fishbach told LifeNews.com.
"Even though Guttmacher admits that its abortion numbers in the developing world are based on conjecture and are therefore unreliable, it continues to stridently argue that the legalization of abortion is the answer to the problems facing poor women," he added.
"Pregnant women need access to doctors, hospitals, medications, nutritional care, safe childbirth and other medical care in order to reduce the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. The legalization of abortion does nothing to improve women’s health or welfare," he said.
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