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.

href=”http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/01/a_jesuits_perspective_on_abort.html”
target=”_blank”>Here is a wonderful guest opinion
on the Washington Post/Newsweek site by Dr. William Blazek, a Jesuit
scholastic and physician.

…A further note on killing the other
person: As a practicing physician licensed to care for pregnant women,
I believe that abortions kill a living human being in the earliest
stages of development. The moral question at hand is not if we are
killing; it is whether the victims have any claims as persons or not.
While the U.S. legal balance is at present skewed towards the denial of
rights for the unborn, Catholics and many Evangelical Christians argue
that both the mother and the unborn have rights. On a spiritual level,
a woman seeking an abortion should recognize that exercising her
choice will kill a vulnerable and defenseless human being. There is
no doubt about this. There is also no doubt that an action can be legal
and at the same time be wrong.

Final point, we kill the Church when, in ignorance, we hold it up to
ridicule. Last Spring, I asked several medical students in a seminar
whether they rejected Catholic teachings regarding reproduction and
artificial contraception. Several raised their hands. I prompted them
to articulate the position and to give their critique of it.
Conversation languished for some while. None in that group of
graduating physicians had an answer, yet these well-educated role
models were willing to publicly disagree with an argument they could
not explain. At a recent Christmas party, a gentlemen identifying
himself as a Catholic biologist was railing for research that would
result in the death of frozen human embryos. He justified the
exploitation, because they are just sitting there. I advised him that
the Churchs reverence for the protected status of a human person is
not based on level of activity but on an intrinsic dignity. He agreed
to consider that.

Hat tip
href=”http://somehavehats.typepad.com/some_wear_clerics/2008/01/a-jesuit-speaks.html”
target=”_blank”>Karen Hall.

This year their is an interesting
juxtaposition of MLK’s birthday and
tomorrows walk for life which is the great civil rights movement of
today.  Though as bad as segregation was the intentional
murder of innocents is so much worse.

Margaret Cabaniss at Inside Catholic
was
shocked to see an actual sympathetic column from the Washington Post on people
involved in the
March for Life.  Here is a great quote from it.

Valentine,
who is majoring in human life studies at a Catholic college in Ohio,
said that every time he and his friends persuade a young woman not to
have an abortion, they throw her a baby shower to make sure she and the
newborn start out with the necessities.

He noted that the antiabortion movement
is becoming predominantly youthful while the abortion rights movement
is aging. “This conference shows that the youth are not the future of
the pro-life movement,” he said. “We are the movement.” 

Dawn Eden has a wonderful story an a Supreme Irony on someone involved
in the March for Life.

Gerald at the Cafeteria is Closed has some
good pictures of the San Francisco Walk for Life here and here.

American Papist who will be at the march
will be maintaining constant coverage of
the even.

In other news a speech by abortionist
Alberto Hodari, captured on video and posted on YouTube and the Students
for Life of America Web site  includes this:

“I’m not joking. I believed because it
was new, we used to let the boyfriend or husbands come into the room
when we were doing the abortion. It was that they heard that Caesarian
section or doctors allowed husbands in the delivery room. When I came
to America, nowhere. They wouldn’t even let me go see my wife deliver a
baby and I was a doctor. ‘Now you, stay outside.’ So gradually it
became we were very modern we let the boyfriends come in and they all
passed out. And more, one sued me because he fall, he broke his tooth,
he sued me. And so what do I do now if somebody comes? The state says
‘no.’ The state doesn’t say ‘no’, but I blame the state. They don’t
bother to check with the state. My wife says we doctors have a license
to lie, and it’s true. It’s absolutely true. Sometimes you need to lie
to a patient about things they want to do or no.”

Dawn Eden reports on a Planned Parenthood’s
worker who in a blog entry mentions covering up the reporting
of child rape.  Planned Parenthood is very consistent in this.