Guttmacher, media downplay pro-life factors in abortion decline
by Kelli
How does the Guttmacher Institute interpret its findings [of a drop in the abortion rate from 2008-2011] in light of its pro-abortion mantra “safe, legal and rare?” The organization doesn’t appear to be too pleased, but then, it began under the auspices of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In a press release, Elizabeth Nash, the state-issues manager for Guttmacher, said, “As we monitor trends in abortion going forward, it is critical that we also monitor whether these state restrictions are preventing women who need abortion services from accessing them”….
Even the authors of the study, Rachel Jones and Jenna Jerman, … denied that the decline resulted from “new state abortion restrictions” or from the “drop in the number of abortion providers during this period.”
Since 2010, though, the number of pro-life laws has skyrocketed. In 2011, there were 92 pro-life laws passed; in 2012, there were 43 passed, and in 2013, there were 70 more….
… [T]he report shows that women are choosing life. It mentions that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2010 goal, established in 2000, to reduce unintended pregnancies was not met (the rate between 2001 and 2008 increased from 48 percent to 51 percent).
The report also notes that the number of women with unintended pregnancies choosing abortion dropped from 47 percent to 40 percent in the same time period….
The authors are unwilling to admit that the answer could be as simple as American women not needing or turning away from abortion.
The Guttmacher report glaringly omits the Healthy People 2010 final review showing abstinence programs are exceeding expectations. The review indicates that the goals for reducing teenage pregnancy during the period 2006 through 2008 almost hit the 100 percent mark.
Teen pregnancy, which peaked in 1996 at 63 per 1,000 women, now hovers around 40. Girls under age 15 exceeded their abstinence goal by 14.3 percent, while under-15 boys only achieved 66.7 percent of their goal. Girls ages 15-17 reached almost 77 percent of the goal, and boys reached almost 78 percent….
Guttmacher credits better contraceptive use for the drop in abortion and neglects to mention the data attesting to the effectiveness of abstinence programs, especially for girls.
While soft-pedaling the facts, Guttmacher’s latest report clearly shows that new pro-life laws, strong pro-life messages and effective abstinence education are related to the decline in abortions.
~ Brenda Zurita, addressing the Guttmacher Institute’s most recently released report, Washington Times, February 3
[Graphic by Guttmacher via LifeNews]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The rate declined from 1980 to 2011 and you claim it’s because of restrictive laws from 2011 onwards. There was a steep decline in the early 1990’s, what caused that?
The newer, long-term contraceptives are proving more reliable because the ‘human failing’ factor is reduced.
Girls under age 15 exceeded their abstinence goal by 14.3 percent, while under-15 boys only achieved 66.7 percent of their goal. – that raises a few awkward questions doesn’t it.
So the Guttmacher data showing a decline works for you but the reasoning they provide doesn’t.
“Teen pregnancy, which peaked in 1996 at 63 per 1,000 women, now hovers around 40. Girls under age 15 exceeded their abstinence goal by 14.3 percent, while under-15 boys only achieved 66.7 percent of their goal. Girls ages 15-17 reached almost 77 percent of the goal, and boys reached almost 78 percent….”
This kinda shows what I’ve been saying, that people need to reconsider what messages they are giving young boys about sex. I’ve long been concerned about and seen the damage of treating young boys like they are necessarily the aggressors in sexual relationships, that they are all balls of hormones that are incapable of controlling themselves and learning discernment, “boys will be boys”, real men always want all sex, and all that. I wonder if those messages are part of the reason in the disparity between abstinence rates in under fifteen boys and girls.
“that raises a few awkward questions doesn’t it.”
People don’t like to talk about it or acknowledge it but I strongly suspect that there’s a lot more older female, younger male sexual abuse and statutory rape when it comes to young teen males. There certainly was in my peer group when I was a teenager, plenty of young adult and even older adult women who had (completely illegal) sex with us. It seemed to mostly be women who had trouble with or fear of adult men and saw young teens as less threatening and easier to control and deal with (there were a lot of men who did the same, of course, with both boys and girls). It doesn’t seem to be acknowledged because I think people have trouble seeing boys as victims of women, because real men want that right (gross)? I wonder if that has something to do with that as well as the crappy messages they are getting. Someone is having sex with those boys, and it doesn’t seem to be girls in their age group.
Reality there are more factors at work, some of them coming from concerted efforts from the pro-life movement, than it seems that Guttmacher is willing to go into. It’s an inherently hard thing to measure anyway, all you can do is basically survey people and look at correlations.
Maybe one reason abortion has declined is that so many people who would be old enough to consider having one now (or cause a girl to consider having one) were aborted themselves!
Nah it’s about abortion rates, not overall amount of pregnancies and abortions (though those are down too I believe). The rate isn’t dependent on how many people there are, it’s amount of abortions per 1000 women (I think that’s the number, it could be something else). If there is a million women or ten million women, the rates can be compared but the raw numbers can’t be.
So Reality, if this is all due to more contraception, and not pro-life laws, will you finally support legislation that, for example, required parental consent or proper regulation of abortion clinics, since by your admission they have no impact on the access to abortion?
I have to say, I’m really looking forward to the stats for 2013. With the number of clinics that closed that year, we’re bound to see a significant decline in the abortion rate.
Unless you are against making abortion rare, a decline in the abortion rate is something both sides of the debate should welcome.
So Reality, if this is all due to more contraception, and not pro-life laws, will you finally support legislation that, for example, required parental consent or proper regulation of abortion clinics, since by your admission they have no impact on the access to abortion? – I didn’t say they have no impact on access. I said that the rate had been falling prior to the restrictive access laws coming into effect. We don’t have the applicable data yet. We also don’t have a clear picture of how improved and more widely used morning after pills will play a part. As smaller clinics are closing there are bigger ones opening. And access may not be so necessary if morning after pills are readily available.
I will support ethical and honest laws, not TRAP laws.
What are TRAP laws? I know I used to know the acronym but I have forgotten.
Any regulation that results in less abortions (as long as it doesn’t hurt any woman’s physical health, life-saving abortions are sadly sometimes necessary) is fine by me.
I am upset that no one seems worried that so many young boys under the age of fifteen are having sex, presumably with people older than themselves as well. If the girls are exceeding expectations for abstinence at that age, but the boys are failing at such significantly different rates than something is seriously wrong here. I’ve read that the younger you are when you first have consensual sex the more sex partners and risky sexual behaviors you are likely to partake in during your lifetime, especially in your teens and twenties. And young people, especially teenagers under fifteen, are much less likely to use either contraception or barrier methods to prevent STDs.
So these boys are having sex at really young ages, a lot of it is probably completely unprotected, and they are more likely to be continuing this pattern of risky and promiscuous sexual behavior to adulthood. And promiscuous men initiate and seek out sex with a lot of different women, and I bet are more likely to abandon a child resulting from a casual encounter than a monogamous relationship (possibly resulting in the woman aborting because she feels alone), or even worse, pressure or coerce a woman to abort. We already have a ridiculously high amount of single mothers who aren’t getting child support or parenting help from the child’s father, as well as a still too high number of abortions. I really don’t think that the issues with boys having sex so young should be ignored. Especially since I’m worried that a lot of their partners might be older than them, more than a couple years at that age is a power imbalance and I consider that sexual abuse even if the boy consented.
TRAP stands for Targeted Restrictions of Abortion Providers. They basically cry foul aka TRAP anytime a pro-life bill is passed even when it is a common sense measure and is equivalent to what is expected from other medical facilities.
By the same token, abortion providers support targeted restrictions aimed at sidewalk counselors, pregnancy resource centers, and abortion opponents in general e.g. size, placement, and context of signs, buffer zones, etc. Acronym anyone?
Lacking any specific regulation, abortion supporters through law enforcement attempt to stretch a law already on the books and apply it to a pro-life activity. Case in point: Brian Westbrook of Coalition for Life was arrested for “false advertising” because he held a sign that said Free Ultrasounds, which were available across the street. Another person was arrested for having a household good i.e. a lawn chair set up by the sidewalk next to her. After being found guilty at the municipal level, both cases were eventually dismissed on appeal. (Thanks Thomas More Society.) What a ridiculous waste of the court’s time and resources.
Where I live law enforcement tends to do the bidding of Planned Parenthood and hassle/arrest us for “trespassing,” “harassment,” etc. when no such infraction has occurred. There has yet to be a successful prosecution.
“Have you had sex?” is a question to which the answer isn’t generally clearly verifiable. Things have changed somewhat since I was 15 or so but I know boys were vastly more likely to say yes than girls were. The girls tended to say no even if they had.
Oh, yeah now I remember. I don’t think “TRAP” applies to a lot of the laws that come up, some of them are just trying to get abortion providers up to the standards that other medical clinics have. I remember some minor regulation, something about doorways having to be over a certain width so gurney’s could fit through in case of emergency, was protested by pro-choicers because they said it would affect access to abortion. Two things: I’m happy if it affects access to abortion, and why would the pro-choicers who worry about women’s health be okay with abortions being performed in a clinic where emergency services couldn’t get in with a gurney if something happened?
Reality that’s true, but stats like these are sometimes verified and backed up with things like STD reports by county and things like that as well. I know that when I was a homeless teenager they had people from universities or the government who liked to study us for various things. Some of it was surveys but sometimes they either got anonymous information from county health or asked us to release our medical records so they could report on the info supposedly without using our names (sometimes they’d even pay us to take part in these things! Looking back I think they exploited us in a way). What I thought was weird and rather biased is they treated the girls like victims (asking them if they’d been victimized by violence or sex crimes, either before or after coming homeless) but the focus on us boys was usually about our own criminality (asking us what crimes we’ve perpetrated or witnessed). There’s a really, really high rate of sexual violence and other violence against street kids as well as a lot of promiscuity and statutory crimes that the kids “consent” to, even before becoming homeless, and a lot of times it’s just flat out ignored for the boys. So it still worries me, even though I’m well aware that the numbers could be overestimating the numbers for the boys especially if it’s solely based on surveys. I’ve just seen people ignore things involving promiscuity and sexual abuse and exploitation when it involves males, and I don’t like it and I try to bring attention to it whenever it’s applicable. Boys need people worrying about and protecting them too, it’s not just girls who are at risk for stuff. Even if it’s like only me, lol, someone needs to worry about them.
STD reports can’t verify the overall number or rate of people who have or haven’t had sex. And there aren’t many medical records which will tell if someone is a virgin or not, especially with regard to boys.
I agree, trying to keep abuse and exploitation of males as well as females on the agenda is a necessity.
Yes, all abuse and exploitation is a cause for concern, no victims should be left out. I didn’t mean to say that I think people shouldn’t focus on the girls too, I didn’t mean that. I just think that there are a lot of awesome people working on that but from my experience not really many if any for the boys. That’s why I mention it more often. Most support and actions are geared towards female victims which is great, they need it, but there’s a real need that’s not being met for male victims of such things and it needs attention. I wasn’t trying to leave out female victims just trying to mention the ones who get ignored most of the time. I worry about kids a lot.
What I meant about STD reports is that they can be used to gain more information and try and back up the dubious information in the surveys. If like one in 100 girls under fifteen had an STD, but five in 100 boys did, that would be information that would seem to support these numbers. You obviously can’t verify virginity in males as you pointed out (or in females, really, because hymens don’t exist for everyone and things other than sex can break them), but other information can be looked out to see if there really is a problem of this magnitude. Does that make sense? I don’t think I’m explaining it right.
Reality says:
February 4, 2014 at 1:41 am
The newer, long-term contraceptives are proving more reliable because the ‘human failing’ factor is reduced.
You have to read the article, R-dude:
“… [T]he report shows that women are choosing life. It mentions that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2010 goal, established in 2000, to reduce unintended pregnancies was not met (the rate between 2001 and 2008 increased from 48 percent to 51 percent). The report also notes that the number of women with unintended pregnancies choosing abortion dropped from 47 percent to 40 percent in the same time period….”
Unplanned pregnancies are increasing, just slightly. We cannot give any credit to some phantom “more effective contraception.”
But a significantly greater percentage of women are choosing life for the child.
You like CHOICE — don’t you, R? So surely you do not care if more women choose life or death. It’s all the same to you.
But we love LIFE. It is the only good choice. And so we celebrate.
I have read the article D-dude. I’ve also read a few others on the same report.
What they tell us is that we don’t really know much about what factors have had an influence and to what extent.
What was the availability and rate of use of long-term contraception in 2008? How about in 2011? Or 2013?
What about the older type contraceptives?
How about education on contraceptive use? Sex-ed in general?
What are some of the qualitative influences on whether women with unintended pregnancies abort or not?
You like CHOICE — don’t you, R? – yep, unlike some.
So surely you do not care if more women choose life or death. It’s all the same to you. – they’re not choosing life or death. But whether they choose to keep or abort is fine by me. I’m happy as long as women have the choice.
But we love LIFE. – most of us do Del.
It is the only good choice. – not for everyone.
And so we celebrate. – your version.
By “twenties.” do you mean mostly early twenties, Deluded? In many cases as most people know, there’s a much bigger difference between the life of most 20 year olds than most 29 year olds.
Yeah, I mean early twenties. I’m 25 and I feel like I’m a completely different person than I was at 20, and I think it’d be super creepy of me to date the average 20 year old because I think there’s just too much of a life experience difference (they tend to be in college and figuring out what they want to do with life, while I’m divorced and have two kids, it would just be creepy). But some people tend to be really promiscuous throughout their entire twenties and even into their thirties before they mature a bit, so I think it depends on the individual in a way.
Hi Jack. Thanks for you post regarding the sexual molestation and statutory rape of boys. I know we have discussed this before and I am very concerned for these boys and teens. In my work with youth groups I have had some young men share that adult women were their first sexual partners (sexual predators is really the correct term) sometimes 20 and 30 somethings seduce boys as young as 9 or 10. The wounds run deep but these boys never report it and keep it secret because
1. they are supposed to be “macho” proud of becoming “a man”
2. they are ashamed to be considered a “statutory rape victim”
3. older males or their peer may even laud them for “getting laid”
4. they believe because it gave them pleasure they are not being violated so they cannot report it
5. the sexual predator told them no one will believe them
I can remember some of these young men when they are in a faith-based supportive environment being transparent enough to say they are hurt, wounded, ashamed, feel guilt and I can remember a young man who kept saying “it wasn’t right, it wasn’t right”, he was visibly shaken by his memories. We need to first protect our boys and teen boys from sexual predators (female and male predators) and also offer help and healing to these young boys and men who have been abused. Yes, of course we need to protect and offer help to our girls and teen girls as well but how can we have healthy, functional families when our young men who are meant to be future husbands, fathers and head of households are walking wounded. I am with you on this Jack and am working on faith-based teen programs, conferences, etc. and want to address these issues. Part of our message is to stop the abuse and the secrecy. I would appreciate you prolifers suggestions on this.
I ‘m waiting for “reality” to respond to Chris’ excellent question.
I clearly did “thomas r.”
Oh please “reality” you just pouted about the pill this and that, and truly just danced around the question diverting attention to TRAP. Reread the question and answer it as it was presented to you. I’ve got to say you fooled those 3 “likes” or were they just pro-aborts thinking you fooled pro-lifers with that tangential TRAP spiel, well whatever….
I answered the question in full. I cerainly spoke of more than the pill. And I didn’t pout.
‘tangental TRAP spiel’ – sounds a bit ad hominem to me ;-)
You just don’t like the answer I gave. Why don’t you give your own and read that and be happy?