Honest abortion statistics are difficult to come by and complicated by the ways the information is obtained and later organized and presented.
The most comprehensive numbers seem to be provided by Gutmacher. (www.gutmacher.org) This is the agency providing statistics for Planned Parenthood. Many believe this partnership and the numbers reported should be questioned. I agree. They are on the same side of the issue so this could involve a conflict of interest.
The unsettling issue I have with Gutmacher is their use of language that attempts to convince the reader abortion is common, safe, and acceptable – even excepted or should be. They are proud of their association with PP and biased heavily in favor of abortion on demand.
If you go to their site you will find them advocating solving the AIDS crisis as well as other social issues and linking them subtly to abortion without the reader realizing it at first. They are not an AIDS support service. They are not a group of social care givers. They are a statistical reporting organization.
Their attempt to soothe the reader by implying their compassion and tolerance and involvement is manipulation at its liberal best.
This is another reason I believe so strongly we must concentrate on abortion differently. One woman at a time. Discouragement sets in when we see the huge numbers…over 1 million abortions in the US annually. Or we can disconnect from the human side of the issue and see only the numbers. This disconnect leads to us voting pro-life and believing we’ve done our part while ignoring the need to be involved on a heart level.
Statistics are a measurement only. Facts of legalized abortion. They are not even half the story.
How can a couple of pages of numbers possibly represent the suffering of thousands of women who believed a lie? Planned Parenthood and Gutmacher take the easy way out. They deceive. And then they take credit for relieving women of unwanted children. You’d think they were saving the world and solving every problem faced by humankind. Their politically correct terminology is a technique used to hide their arrogance. Or at least put a loose lid on it. They sweet-talk women in crisis and offer not a solution but another crisis that must be lived out by the women left in their wake.
It’s okay to know the numbers and consider them – but please take time to remember this: these numbers represent real lives lost. Deaths provided for by a group with a political/social agenda. With every single abortion they want us to believe they are the compassionate ones and that pro-life supporters are agenda seeking, hate-filled, ignorant, cruel, and intolerant religious zealots.
They lie about that too.
