Lying about Spinning...

I hate liars. Especially when they lie about life-and-death issues to force their idiotic world-views on others:

Spinning an Abortion Study [Michael J. New]

This week the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) released a report entitled “Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress.” The media have been hard at work spinning its findings. Both the Associated Press and USA Today have reported the finding that abortion rates in countries with protective abortion laws are similar to abortion rates in countries with permissive laws — hinting strongly that protective legislation does little to protect unborn children. The BBC was even more blunt, running an article with the headline “Bans ‘do not cut abortion rate.’”

Fair enough summary of that part of what the media has reported. Of course, that's the only part that's fair.

However, the media’s analysis is faulty. Most of the countries where abortion is prohibited are in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. These countries have low per capita income and a higher incidence of social pathologies that may increase the perceived need for abortion. This nuance is not picked up in any of the media coverage of the AGI report.

The data shows that there are, world-wide, approximately 29 abortions per 1000 women, half of which are legal and half of which are not. The approximate abortion rate in Africa is 29 per 1000. All of which are illegal and result in far more fatalities. But that's not the here or there of this paragraph.

Rather what I noted is the dog-whistle appeal to racism by the author who makes is bigoted argument by subtly holding out how they're "inferior" to "us" they are... And while I'm supposing Dr. Wells thinks he's subtle in his racism, this old "white culture superiority" crap is hundreds of years old and plain as day. Especially to those of us who grew up in families where that subtle racism has been practiced by some of our family members.

Anyway, here's how he finally spins his argument by adopting a persecution complex then lying about what things mean:

Interestingly, AGI has also released research that demonstrates the effectiveness of pro-life laws. This summer it released a literature review showing that 20 of 24 studies found that public funding of abortion increased abortion rates. Other AGI research has demonstrated that parental-involvement laws and well-designed informed-consent laws also reduce the incidence of abortion. Unfortunately, research like that typically receives scant attention from the mainstream media.

Not really. Interestingly, abortion has dropped world-wide at about the same rate for legal and illegal countries. So it's not that they measured the "effectiveness" of anti-abortion statutes. They were not effective in preventing abortion, despite said claims by the author; but only effective at criminalizing it and pushing into dangerous, sometimes fatal, avenues.

Rather, as this study showed, they actually measured the larger change in abortion rates. Or as they say, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Of course, this was an ebb tide, but that's just technical trivia with the over-all point being his conclusions are false because the change that was actually measured was the changes in attitude towards abortion and not any obviously circumventable restrictions in availability.

For example, the world-wide rate dropped over the past decade from 35 abortions to 29 abortions, per 1000. The African rate dropped from 33 to 29. During this period ten countries liberalized abortion, two imposed restrictions while Africa did not change where it was illegal to have an abortion anywhere on the continent before and remains so now.

Yet, despite the liberalization, the rate dropped. And, in fact, it dropped everywhere: Europe, the United States, Oceania, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean. So, no victory there for the anti-abortion crowd, your restrictions failed and ultimately only served to kill women.

And we know that because, as the study has clearly shown, draconian anti-abortion laws merely push abortion from safe and legal to unsafe and illegal. They do not, however, stop abortions. Rather women will just do what the Irish women used to do... Go to England or Switzerland if they had the money for a safe, legal abortion or a back-alley and risk their lives if they didn't.