The abortion industry has no problem deceiving women about their unborn babies, so reports of pro-abortion researchers manipulating numbers to benefit their agenda should not come as a surprise.
Arina O. Grossu, director for the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, and Thomas Jacobson, executive director of the Global Life Campaign, recently analyzed a new report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute and found evidence that it “wildly inflated” global abortion numbers.
Guttmacher is the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, and this isn’t the first time it has been accused of manipulating numbers to support the pro-abortion agenda. In the past, Guttmacher has been accused of falsely claiming contraception is lowering teen abortion rates. It also was accused of inflating illegal abortion numbers in an attempt to discredit pro-life efforts.
The new global abortion report, published earlier in May, claimed that abortions world-wide reached a staggering 56.3 million per year in 2010 to 2014. That is up from an estimated 50.4 million abortions per year in 1990 to 1994, according to the report.
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But much of that data isn’t verifiable, Grossu and Thomas said in an article for The Federalist.
They wrote:
It is possible to track 12.4 million actually reported abortions annually worldwide, including in the top three countries of China, the United States, and Russia. But Guttmacher’s assertion that 56.3 million abortions occur worldwide annually is highly improbable and unprovable, not to mention that their total is four and a half times more than the actual documented data available. (Actual abortion data are available here for over 100 nations and territories, including year-by-year for many of them).
Perhaps this is why the report even admits on all of its charts that is has a “90% uncertainty interval.” Who publishes a report with information that is 90 percent uncertain? A report worthy of being trusted should have a 90 percent or more certainty level.
According to their analysis, some of the data came from reliable sources such as government agencies; however, other data, especially in countries where abortion is illegal, came from unreliable studies with questionable data collection methods.
Grossu and Thomas said the inflated abortion numbers fit well into the pro-abortion movement’s global agenda.
“This report is a tool to push for more contraception and abortion, especially in developing countries such as many in Africa and Latin America,” they said. “The report asserts, again with 90 percent uncertainty, that abortion rates are just as high where abortion is illegal as where it is legal.”
Guttmacher has incentive to produce favorable numbers for the abortion industry, too. From 2004 to 2009, Planned Parenthood’s tax filings show that it gave Guttmacher more than $2.1 million.
“The study is ideology-driven, not data-driven. It’s a conclusion in search of numbers, not numbers in search of a conclusion. What it does affirm, though, is that abortion is the greatest genocide in history,” they concluded.
