Barack Obama Repeats False Claim Abortions Haven’t Declined Under Bush
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 17, 2008
Lake Forest, CA (LifeNews.com) — During the presidential forum on Saturday night, pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama repeated the erroneous claim that abortions have not declined under President Bush. The idea behind is the claim is to make it appear that pro-life policies don’t reduce abortions.
During a discussion of abortion, Obama declared his support for the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions. Following his statement, he made the attack on President Bush’s pro-life policies.
"The fact is that — although we have a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years — abortions have not gone down," Obama said.
Yet that claim doesn’t square with the latest national abortion numbers put forward by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research firm associated with Planned Parenthood, the abortion business that has endorsed Obama.
In January, AGI reported that the number of abortions nationwide have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years and have declined 25 percent since 1990 — with half of that time period coming under pro-life presidents.
The number of abortions are now at their lowest point since 1.179 million in 1976, AGI said.
Meanwhile, research from a nonpartisan political watchdog group finds the claim false when compared with national and state abortion statistics.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania says that claims that abortions have not decreased under President Bush are "not true."
"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," the researchers have written.
"This claim is false. It’s based on an opinion piece that used data from only 16 states. A study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute of 43 states found that abortions have actually decreased," Annenberg indicates.
"The claim is repeated by supporters of abortion rights as evidence that Bush’s anti-abortion policies have backfired, or at least been ineffective," it added. "But the claim is untrue. In fact, according to the respected Alan Guttmacher Institute, a 20-year decline in abortion rates continued after Bush took office."
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