Flawed “Study” Calls for supporting Abortionists instead of Protecting Women

WASHINGTON – The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of state right-to-life affiliates and local chapters, today said that a new “study” issued by the Guttmacher Institute (originally founded as a special research arm of Planned Parenthood), was flawed and misleading and cautioned journalists to avoid accepting Guttmacher’s work at face value.

“There’s really not a lot that is new here. In this report, Guttmacher simply assembles a lot of its tired old, flawed research to trot out against the latest pro-life legislation that they claim to be ‘ineffective’ but yet has clearly frustrated their friends in the abortion industry,”said Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., National Right to Life director of education & research. “This research, some as much as 35 years old, not only has basic design and sampling problems, but reaches conclusions that are not entirely consistent with their own data.” (For examples of some of these flawed studies, please contact the NRLC Communications Department.)

Throughout their report, Guttmacher attacks state laws protecting pain-capable unborn children from abortion, prohibiting the use of webcams as a means to prescribe dangerous chemical abortion pills, and requiring abortionists and abortion clinics meet basic minimum standards to operate. In issuing their full-throated defense of the abortion industry, Guttmacher uses studies to support its conclusions that come from other reports by Guttmacher authors or by authors who are well-known for their pro-abortion advocacy.

“Guttmacher ignores Kermit Gosnell, and other dangerous abortionists like him that have operated with little legal oversight in this country for decades, putting women’s lives and health at risk,” O’Bannon added. “There are real women who have been injured and died while Guttmacher and the abortion industry looked the other way and touted abortion’s safety. They continue to minimize the risk in this latest report, saying that fewer than .03% of women having an abortion require hospitalization. Even if this were true, it demonstrates that to Guttmacher’s way of thinking, the 2,700 women requiring hospitalization every year are acceptable collateral damage in the larger effort to protect abortion on demand at all cost.”