The Great Abortion-Is-Rising Hoax

Michelle Malkin blogged You probably haven't heard about the new analysis by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, released Thursday, May 19. The study indicates that both the number of abortions in the U.S. and the abortion rate declined in 2001 and 2002:

The Institute estimates that 1,303,000 abortions took place in the United States in 2001—0.8% fewer than the 1,313,000 in 2000. In 2002, the number of abortions declined again, to 1,293,000, or another 0.8%. The rate of abortion also declined, from 21.3 procedures per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 2000 to 21.1 in 2001 and 20.9 in 2002.

The full study is available here (.pdf file).

In the wake of the report's release last week, top Democrats continued to claim that abortions have increased since President Bush took office in January 2001--a claim they have made repeatedly since last fall.

As Hillary Clinton put it on Inside Politics yesterday,

[D]uring the Clinton administration, abortions went down. And they've gone back up under the Bush administration. So clearly, what is being done by the current policies are not necessarily working.

Howard Dean made an even more outlandish statement on Meet the Press on Sunday, three days after the Guttmacher analysis was released:

You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was president? ... There are not many of us who want to see the abortion rate continue to go up as it has under President Bush.

Neither Inside Politics host Judy Woodruff nor Meet the Press host Tim Russert challenged these unsubstantiated claims.

Nor did any other MSM reporter or news anchor. According to Nexis database, the only people to mention the Guttmacher study were the editorial writers at the New York Sun and columnist Rich Lowry.

Do you think the MSM would have ignored the study if it had shown an increase in the number of abortions rather than a decrease?

I doubt the MSM even heard of the study, since it was not listed in a Dem talking point

The bogus claim about rising abortions is apparently based on a discredited analysis of abortions in 16 states by Glenn Stassen, a professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Stassen himself has retracted his original conclusion that abortion increased in 2 of the 16 states he examined (South Dakota and Wisconsin). A third state, Illinois, showed an increase in Stassen's analysis, but more recent figures show a large decrease. In at least two states, Arizona and Colorado, the increase in abortions reported by Stassen is almost certainly an artifact of improved reporting techniques.

Although the Guttmacher estimates are "subject to some limitations and should be considered provisional," they are more rigorous than Stassen's analysis, as even Stassen now concedes.

Hat tip to Reasoned Audacity via Just One Minute, both of whom have much more.

See also Factcheck.org: The biography of a bad statistic.

JustOneMinute blogged The AGI and the Center for Disease Control are the two nationally recognized authorities on this topic, a fact we have been noting for months while deriding this Dem talking point that abortions have risen under George Bush.

blogged Take a look at the whole transcript. This is just a small slice of the comedy Dean served up yesterday. . . For more abortion decline data, see here. And here's a link to a series of articles Ramesh Ponnuru has written on abortion decline.

Scott C. Pierce blogged I have found factcheck.org to be a good source of non-partisan information when examining claims made by politicians. Their latest exposes the lie of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean when they claim the number of abortions has risen since President Bush took office.

Tom Maguire blogged Can't Spell "Hilarity" Without "Hillary"

Another humorous item from the interview with Hillary:

WOODRUFF: To the United States Senate. Ed Cox has formed an exploratory committee, Republican attorney. He's already saying New Yorkers deserve a senator who is committed to New York and only to New York. If you were asked to pledge, at some point between now and next year, whether you will definitely fill out a six-year term in the Senate, what would you say?

CLINTON: I am focused on winning re-election. That is what I work on every single day, just as I have worked my heart out for the last four years. I think that many people in New York know how hard I've worked. Obviously dealing with 9/11 was a horrific experience and responsibility. I've tried to work throughout the state. I've tried to bring people together from upstate and downstate and from one end to the other. And I'm going to continue doing that every day, and I'm not going to get diverted. I'm going to stay focused on what my job is as the senator from New York.

And most of all I am not going to answer your question.