Chuck Donovan of the Charlotte Lozier Institute joined us this week to talk about abortion research as the basis for policy and practice.
One of the compelling reasons for legalizing abortion was a statistic reflecting 10,000 deaths annually due to back-alley abortions.
The only problem is that it wasn’t true. The actual number for 1972 was 24 and according to the CDC.
When I first felt the call to speak truth about abortion I didn’t know any of that. I simply wanted to know how many, if any, other women were out there like I once was–hurting, mortified and too ashamed to seek help. My background in broadcasting, and later my pursuit of my degree, taught me to look for a primary source of any statistic or research citation.
I quickly learned that reporting is just one more battleground surrounding abortion.
When I began my search in 2001,the Guttmacher Institute was the only abortion research organization I could locate as a primary source. The government-run Centers for Disease Control relied on voluntary reports from abortion providers. As they note, when it comes to reporting on abortion data:
There is no national requirement for data submission or reporting.
I was uneasy relying on abortion providers’ self-reports. And more-so data published by GI, an organization with a pro-abortion agenda and with roots in the abortion industry:
The [GI] Center was originally housed within the corporate structure of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). Its program, however, was independently developed and overseen by a National Advisory Council separate from the PPFA Board of Directors. Its early development was nurtured by Alan F. Guttmacher, an eminent obstetrician-gynecologist, teacher and writer who was PPFA’s president for more than a decade until his death in 1974.
How, exactly, does the president of any organization advocating, advancing, and profiting from any practice “independently” develop and oversee data-gathering on that practice–especially when the data is being gathered under his organization’s roof? Imagine a world with an airline president instead of the FAA watching airlines; the head of a television network instead of the FCC as the sole arbiter of data on the practices of broadcasters; a drug company executive instead of the FDA reporting drug safety. You get the idea. That is just one of the hurdles to objectivity GI claims it cleared when in reality all it did was sidestep its intent.
As I continued seeking answers I discovered The Eliot Institute, and The deVeber Institute in Canada; WECARE also brings together licensed and credentialed professionals and researchers. In 2011 the Charlotte Lozier Institute began providing balance through research, commentary and context for questions surrounding abortion and other issues of life. The Charlotte Lozier Institute is the 501(c)(3) research and education institute of the Susan B. Anthony List, an organization dedicated to electing candidates and pursuing policies that will reduce and ultimately end abortion.
This week we welcomed Lozier Institute’s president Chuck Donovan to discuss the pro-abortion research bias which exists around abortion data and its impact on culture. Rather than being a dry academic pursuit, this research serves as a basis for setting policy, and should motivate us to see abortion in its true light.
