5/02/2006

Operation Rescue: AGI Abortion Report is Flawed Science

NEW YORK, May 2 /Christian Newswire/ -- Operation Rescue has learned that the Alan Guttmacher Institute plans to release a new abortion report on May 4 that OR says is little more than biased propaganda meant to prop up a failing abortion industry. The Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion supplier.

The report, titled “Abortion in Women's Lives” attempts to pass off as fact such discredited notions that first trimester abortions have virtually no risks, there is no relationship between abortion and breast cancer, and that abortion poses no hazard to women’s mental health.

“We believe this report is an effort to counter the increased pro-life sentiment in our nation and restore some measure of respectability to the increasingly unpopular and stigmatized abortion industry,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “But by using bad science and discredited information, they have only shown how desperate the abortionists are and how low they will go to promote something that most Americans find morally objectionable and disturbing.”

The four authors of the report have expressed radical leftists ideology in the area of human reproduction and sexuality, and have very strong associations with the abortion industry.

“It appears their bias is showing, something a true scientist must not allow. This ‘report’ is not an honest reporting of scientific data,” said Newman.

In contrast, a study released last month by self- professed pro-choice atheist and rationalist Professor David Fergusson, a New Zealand researcher at Christchurch School of Medicine and Health, countered the findings of the Guttmacher report.

Fergusson stated that he and his colleagues were surprised to discover that women who have had abortions were one and a half times more likely to suffer from mental illness.

"Those having an abortion had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors and substance use disorders," according to Fergusson’s research published in the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology.

"[F]rom a personal point of view, I would have rather seen the results come out the other way -- but they didn't. And as a scientist you have to report the facts, not what you'd like to report," said Fergusson.

“The Guttmacher Institute could take an ethics lesson from Professor Fergusson,” said Newman. “Their paper is simply a white-wash of the true facts because the truth is bad for the abortion industry. Guttmacher’s conclusions about the information are simply not credible.”