Conflict of interest

Jill Stanek reports on the Guttmacher Institute's most recent report indicating that by 2005 abortion had dropped 25% from its all time high of 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2005.  Guttmacher is Planned Parenthoods research arm and I am highly skeptical of anything that comes out of them.  I was a little surprised to see so many Catholic bloggers use the reported decline without the hefty barrels of salt that should be seen when coming out of them.  It is in Planned Parenthood's best interest for there to be a reported decline in abortion.  For one it helps to try to reduce it as a hot topic and to make it a seem that the number of abortions will decline by itself.  Another point is that they can claim that there blanketing of contraception is working.  In an election year they certainly want to make abortion less contentious among voters so that pro-abortion politicians can get elected and to secure Planned Parenthoods source of income as the largest abortion provider.

I surely want a decline in the number of abortions at a substantial rate to be true but it looks like in the case that Jill Stanek reports on that the statistics are quite questionable and while there has been some decrease it is not as much as they reported.  Jill had also made an astute observation about the previously reported baby bump and the decline of some levels of abortion.  Guttmacher claims that it is contraceptives and the lack of access to abortion clinics that is the cause of this reduction.  No surprise that they don't see there is more of a move to embrace life than to kill it.

What really drives me crazy about mainstream reporting on the Guttmacher Institute is that they almost never mention there connection to Planned Parenthood.  If an institute funded by a tobacco company released research that cigarettes were killing less people the media would laugh at such stories because of the massive conflict of interest.  But they don't see this conflict of interest because of their own conflict of interest.