Michael Voris erroneously maligns the pro-life movement
Several months ago Michael Voris admirably apologized for an unintentional gaffe he made in one of his ChurchMilitant.TV videos.
Voris’s March 10 video, “Abortion change?” calls for a similar retraction.
I’d call Voris a friend. We have tussled over the Catholic/Protestant issue a time or two, but I always look forward to sitting down with him for a beer when we’re in the same place. I admire his courage and conviction.
I contacted Voris to give him a heads up about this post, and I appreciate his attempt to respond, but we seemed to talk past each other.
Nevertheless, I cannot let his numerous false statements made against the pro-life movement go answered.
Here was the premise of Voris’s video:
When it comes to the specific issue of abortion, a serious look has to be given to the entire state of the movement. Forty-two years and counting, and nothing has changed of significance.
I agree more could be done, and mistakes have been made. But the examples Voris listed as evidence to demonstrate the pro-life movement’s failures were inaccurate. Citing no sources, Voris claimed neither the number nor rate of abortions is declining, nor is the number of abortion clinics.
Students for Life of America has ably addressed Voris’s numerous misstatements, and I’d like to add my two cents as well.
Voris claim #1: The number of U.S. abortions isn’t actually decreasing, because annual totals do not include chemical abortions, only surgical.
Per Voris, emphasis his:
In the United States, reports indicate that chemical or medical abortions are 25% of the number of surgical abortions. That means you have to look at the number of surgical abortions and add 25% of that number back in to the surgical abortion number to arrive at the true number of total abortions.
So, in 2011, the last year for which the number of chemical abortion numbers are available, there were 1,058,000 surgical abortions in the U.S. If you take 25% of that… roughly, 250,000, and add it back to the 1,058,000 thousands, you get right around 1.3 million total abortions. 1.3 total abortions is the annual number from the year 2000 before chemical abortions became widely available.
So, there hasn’t been any real change in the overall number of abortions, just the type of abortions being done.
This is mostly wrong. Voris didn’t list his source, but the 1.058 and 1.3 million figures came from Guttmacher, and Guttmacher clearly indicated it included chemical abortions in its totals – with the exception of hospitals, for which numbers were not available, but which reportedly commit only 4% of all abortions:
Between April 2012 and May 2013, we surveyed the known universe of abortion providers in the United States….
All respondents were asked the number of induced abortions that were performed in their facilities in 2010 and 2011, and whether early medication abortions (defined as procedures at or before nine weeks’ gestation) were offered. Clinic and physician providers (but not hospital providers) were also asked about the number of early medication abortions performed, with separate items for mifepristone, methotrexate and misoprostol alone….
We asked fewer questions of hospitals because hospital informants typically have access to less information about the specifics of abortion service provision. Information restricted to nonhospital facilities represents the experience of most women having abortions, since these providers performed 96% of all abortions in 2008.
Guttmacher’s abortion numbers have never included chemical abortions at hospitals, so its totals from year to year use the same sources – apples to apples.
Also important is the population of the United States has increased by 100 million since 1970 – up from 200 million to 300+ million today. This means more women are having fewer abortions.
Voris claim #2: The rate of abortion isn’t going down either.
Per Voris:
Why is it that various pro-life organizations are so quick to tout headlines saying, “Abortion rates decline,”when the reality is that’s only half the story. It’s just surgical abortions, not overall abortions, declining. At the end of the day, roughly the same number of children are dying.
But, referring back to Guttmacher, both the rate (abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44) and ratio (abortions per 100 pregnancies) are declining along with the number, which, again, includes chemical abortions (from Y2K onward anyways, the year RU-486 was legalized)…
Voris claim #3: The number of abortion clinics isn’t declining either.
Per Voris, emphasis his:
When you hear about various abortion chambers closing up or going out of business, don’t be so quick to let your thoughts carry you to wrong conclusions. Many abortuaries close up because the demand for surgical abortions has been substituted for by the demand for chemical abortions.
But we do keep track of the number of both chemical and surgical abortion clinics. Of course the number of chemical abortion clinics has gone up. Chemical abortions weren’t legal before 2000. But the total number of abortion clinics is still drastically down, from a high of 2,176 in 1991 to 737 at last count….
Voris also said opinions on abortion haven’t changed much. SFLA listed several charts and stats to indicate otherwise.
Voris concluded, “A whole new strategy needs to be devised, because the day of ‘no abortions, no exceptions’ is just as illusory and out of reach as it was on that fateful day of January 22, 1973. We are doing something wrong.”
I’m all for new strategies and see many emerging.
But here’s the thing. By all measurable standards Voris proposed, we are winning. The number, rate, and ratio of abortions is down, the number of abortion clinics is down, and public opinion is changing for the better.
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.
[…] One such pro-life “claim” was refuted recently by Jill Stanek on her blog which you can read here. […]
Jill, I’ve seen some Michael Voris videos, but not this one. Still, I’d like to comment.
We have to stop the incrementalism and fight abortion from the moment of fertilization. Everything else is partially cooperating with evil. Still said, I call my political representatives in order to ask their support for every pro-life bill–20-weeks ban, etc. Only I add this comment: “…and I’d like YOU to lead in ending all abortion, from day one.”
If every one reading this comment made a point of calling his or her representative once per month (and we prayed and fasted) abortion would disintegrate.
We cannot make an industry of fighting abortion. But there will be many places for all of us to serve even more happily in a culture of life.
Hi Marianna,
The default position of all pro-lifers is to stop abortion from the moment of fertilization. Opposing incrementalism may sound noble to some… perhaps until they come face to face with a baby they’d let die.
Furthermore, everyone I know in the pro-life “industry” would love to get a different job.
Thanks.
Jill, I appreciate all that you do for life and stand by what I wrote.
The link to Voris’s apology is a link to an apology regarding the pope, not the one you’re writing about in this post. I’m still trying to find what his apology said.
Human life begins at the moment of conception, and the truth is that contraception, not just RU486 or hormonally induced pre-term labors, but “regular” birth control (i.e. the Pill, Depro Provera, similar hormonal birth control) absolutely has SOME abortive action. Even Protestant preacher Randy Alcorn has pointed this out. Saying chemical abortions weren’t legal prior to 2000 is spurious, because the abortive action of the Pill was doing its damage on a huge scale since at least 1965, when it began to be widely prescribed to women in Western civilizations. It is a fact that all Christian denominations used to consider all contraception sinful, until the Anglicans caved to popular opinion in the 1930’s at the Lambeth conference. If Christ is Truth, then how can His truth on such a fundamental issue change so suddenly and so drastically (much in the same way it’s “changing” now with regard to “marriage” in denomination after denomination.)
If one would want to say, it’s okay to use some methods to abort some babies at very early stages, then they could possibly be “okay” with the death of an infant in her zygote stage. Of course, the problem with that tack is, if it’s okay to kill an infant then, when is the “cut-off” time that makes it “okay” to kill her? One month of development? Two months? Six months?
I remember Kevorkian being questioned by Katie Couric about how it felt to have killed a certain number of patients, and he threw his head back and laughed that it was just “a nice round number.”
If a person fears God, and realizes the hair on every human being’s head (born or unborn) is counted by Him, then a God-fearing person must also know He is aware of every, let’s not mince words, murder, of a parent’s infant. If RU486 is murder, then, most certainly, so is the Pill when it acts abortively, and the Depro Provera shot when it acts abortively, and every single method that involves a “secondary action” of making the uterine lining inhospitable to implantation, which, essentially, results in the abortion of a child. How is secretly closing the door on one’s womb any different than carrying a baby to term and placing him outside on a freezing day in a cardboard box hidden away in a dumpster? Both methods of abandonment have the same deadly result.
Truth is inescapable, and it’s failing to face that truth which will continually undermine any attempt to legislate a protection-from-the-moment-of-conception safeguard for a zygote. Planned Parenthood and its allies know well that is a line very, very few pro-lifers are ever going to cross, so they can remain fairly secure in the security of their positions and profits.
People who desire to abort their children in an unseen, unknown manner are simply not going to be willing to face the truth of how these contraceptives do sometimes work, and are not going to be willing to give up that power and control of “family planning” (a term coined by Sanger to soften her eugenics agenda, by the way).
Most Christians are not ever going to be able to abandon themselves to that sort of cross–it costs too much of them–it costs fathers burdens and mothers careers, and siblings shares of inheritance. How these choices will affect God’s Judgment of their souls in the end is a question everyone who has ever used such types of birth control, but who claims to reject abortion, needs to seriously think about and investigate for themselves.
The body count man keeps is one thing, the toll of innocent blood God keeps is another–He cannot be fooled, and nothing “unseen” is hidden from Him.
There’s no real evidence hormonal birth control interferes with implantation. There’s a theory, but it doesn’t have scientific backing. I won’t waste my time arguing about it though, I get tired of the arguments.
Voris is a doomsayer and rarely has anything positive or encouraging to say, I dont really listen to anything he says.
Linda, the link was indeed to Voris’s apology about the Pope. I was merely pointing out he has magnanimously retracted erroneous statements before and should do it again. He has not yet retracted the statements made in the video this post referred to. Hope that helps.
I saw Voris’ depressing video when it was first posted, and knew he was wrong. Thank you for addressing each claim directly, and giving us the source info. I agree: he should apologize.
My take-away from his video was that it was kind of an excuse to not get directly involved in the prolife movement, because it isn’t worth doing: we’re no better off. He didn’t say that, and probably wasn’t even aware that he was building a case for sitting out prolife work. But I think the subconscious message was there. And it made me sad. I know he’s trying to be a good Catholic! So, let’s pray for him.
Nevertheless, I cannot let his numerous false statements made against the pro-life movement go answered.
Why do you think it is wrong for Voris to make “false statements against the pro-life movement,” but okay for you to make false statements against the Vatican? In January, you accused “the Vatican” of censoring an anti-abortion message in Pope Francis’s Christmas speech, based on another blogger’s assertion that the English translator of the speech translated it “perfectly” and in its entirety except for a condemnation of abortion. You asserted several times that the omission was purposeful, although you never gave a scrap of evidence showing the intent of the translator, sanctimoniously announcing that we all must be open to correction. However, the claim that the anti-abortion message was omitted from an otherwise-perfectly translated speech is not true. Anyone who listens to the speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R58Ao0toK-I, starting at 17:53) can hear that there were multiple errors in the English translation of the paragraph in question. The French translation included the anti-abortion statement but omitted other parts of that paragraph, entirely undercutting your argument that someone was attempting to suppress the pope’s pro-life message.
In short, you falsely accused the Vatican broadcasters, who are your fellow Christians, of committing a very serious sin. And yet, you never corrected your misinformation or retracted the post. Why do you expect Michael Voris and even the AHA people to adhere to a standard of truth and accuracy that you make no effort to attain in your own writing?
Michael Voris is like the Catholic version of AHA.
Michael Voris and CMTV obviously love the Faith and are one of the most dedicated pro-life warriors out there. I’m very thankful for all there efforts for the unborn as well as yours Jill.
God bless.
I like Mr. Voris, but he is a loose cannon.
He is not an enemy of the pro-life movement, nor is he an irritation from within, like AHA can be.
Mr. Voris is willing to accept correction, and he is gracious to those who disagree with him in good faith.
He certainly gets people thinking and talking, and that is always a good thing. Even when he is wrong.
As to this current controversy, Mr. Voris has not persuaded me that we are not making progress in building a culture of life. However, there are still way too many abortion deaths — no matter how we count them.
Dear Jill,
May I begin by thanking you for all you do!!
You commented to Marianna that, “The default position of all pro-lifers is to stop abortion from the moment of fertilization.”
The late Nellie Grey disagrees with you. Six months prior to her passing, I had the pleasure of talking with her over the phone (quite a surprise, I must say! I called NRTL headquarters just to find out information & she answered. We spoke for quite some time.. I had thought she was an elderly volunteer until she revealed she was the one who started the movement & asked me to call her “Nellie.”)
I asked, “why do you think the prolife movement hasn’t overturned Roe after 40 years.”
She replied, “Because the prolife movement is divided. Many march, but use contraception. Many march, but are pro-gay marriage. Many march, but are ok with women getting abortions in cases of rape and to save the life of the mother. And, far too many fight to keep the proof of abortion at bay and are against abortion photos. I hate to say it, but, Roe will remain until EVERY marcher is 100% prolife and not in name only. If the prolife movement were as united as the prochoice movement, we’d have won by now!” She lamented.
She hit the nail on the head. I took it a step further, commenting that I believe part of the blame lies in the HUGE mistake made by following the “prochoice” movement when we chose a title that also sounded pleasant & positive to the ears… in an effort to market our opposing position.
If we are to fight against abortion, we must call ourselves: anti-abortion! After all, those who wished to abolish slavery called themselves: abolitionists! If anti-abortion is too negative, then, let’s call ourselves abolitionists! But, I strongly believe this term (like the term “prochoice”) is clearly, misleading (as Ms. Grey pointed out).
Perhaps my suggestion (to change the name ‘prolife’) seems too daunting a task to undertake? If anything, then,
I pray Nellie’s words of wisdom penetrates the minds & hearts of all who have ears to hear!
God Bless!
I like both Voris AND Stanik. Obviously both persons are not perfect, but God bless them both and more power to both.
Ooops. Correction. I called the “March for Life” Headquarters… not the NRTL. Just wanted to correct that.
Thanks.
I appreciate the desire to champion even modest victories, and you’re of course more than qualified to quibble with Voris’s stats.
But the 30,000 foot view is this: over 1 million babies are still being killed in this country every year, legally, 42 years later. The assertion that “By all measurable standards Voris proposed, we are winning” seems quite the overstatement to me.
Yes, there has (taking your word for it; I haven’t done my own homework) a modest reduction in the overall number of abortions during a population increase during the same period of time. But we aren’t looking at all at the factors involved.
Why is this happening? What are the causes? Are people having more children? Is the population increase in part related to immigration from countries with stronger taboos against abortion? Are there more measurably effective methods of contraception and/or a higher saturation point of people using them?
What we are not becoming, by any evidence I can see, is a more inherently pro-life country. We have become more licentious, more sexually perverse, and more indifferent to the dignity of human life.
Things are not going in the right direction for us, and at the end of the day, isn’t that Voris’s main point? Something about the pro-life movement that I’ve been worried about for a long time is that we seem to be addicted to losing tactics. We’re looking for political solutions to a moral problem, and we’re never going to bridge that gap.
I think the Sunday Funnies should be replaced with Voris videos. Faaaarrr funnier.
I agree with the general sentiments that presently the Pro-Life movement is serving as a speed bump rather than making serious headway against the Culture of Death. With that being said however, I am reminded about what a wonderful priest once said, which helps put things into perspective: “it took the Church 340 years to convince the Roman Empire that infanticide was evil, it’s been 40 years since Roe v. Wade was decided, these things take time.”
“Of course the number of chemical abortion clinics has gone up. Chemical abortions weren’t legal before 2000.”
Actually, the PDR, pill packaging inserts, websites . . . they all say that birth control pills efface the endometrium, meaning an embryo cannot implant and is aborted as a mechanism of the product. Other products have similar effects, i.e., IUD’s, Depo Provera, and so it is incorrect to say that chemical abortions only recently appeared in 2000. However, the moral issue that civilization can immediately turn around is our sin against charity, specifically the sin of ‘unwanting’ that the products facilitate. We know that out of these three — faith, hope and charity — the greatest of these is charity. We may not know that surely the most pervasive sin against charity is the sin of ‘unwanting’ another person, particularly by taking a contraceptive that deprives them of a place to grow and receive nourishment, or by abortion that destroys their very body. As with Cain who ‘unwanted’ Abel, and as with St. Paul who had ‘unwanted’ Stephen, we don’t understand the magnitude of our sin of ‘unwanting’ until God himself causes the scales to fall from our eyes. May the Lord have mercy on his people.
Hey Jill,
Here are a few simple numbers to substantiate your position. We all know that New York City and New York State are the abortion Mecca of the United States. More than 10% of all abortions in the nation happen right here in a state that is just one out of 50 in the nation. So, if we use New York State as a test case, what do we see?
All data are from the Vital Statistics of New York State. The reader need only click the following link, and look at the section on Annual Vital Statistics Tables for the years 1997-2012. Then Go to Table 24 for each year, which is entitled: “Induced Abortions by Financial Coverage and Resident County, New York State ”
https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/vital_statistics/
So, what do we see? I’ll report the trend by:
Year/#Abortions NY State in total/# Abortions NY City
{The NYC total is included in the NY State total}
2012/ 97,502 NY State/69,419 NYC
2011/102,672 NY State/74,658 NYC
2010/111,212 NY State/77,327 NYC
2009/115,008 NY State/80,629 NYC
2008/118,382 NY State/82,475 NYC
2007/120,554 NY State/83,310 NYC
2006/121,278 NY State/83,226 NYC
2005/117,944 NY State/82,922 NYC
2004/120,401 NY State/85,585 NYC
2003/119,685 NY State/84,903 NYC
2002/123,048 NY State/86,566 NYC
2001/122,276 NY State/86,466 NYC
2000/125,146 NY State/89,037 NYC
1999/132,681 NY State/95,981 NYC
1998/134,687 NY State/97,478 NYC
1997/145,334 NY State/104,344 NYC
So, in other words, since 1997 there has been a 33% decline in the number of abortions in New York State and a 33.5% decline in abortions in New York City in terms of absolute numbers of abortions. But are those numbers reflective of a decline in state population? In other words, is the rate per 100,000 population the same? Turns out the answer is no.
There was a modest growth in the state population of 998,461 people from 1997-2012 (Table 1 in the same reports) There were 18,571,800 in 1997, and 19,570,261 in 2012.
So a 33% decline in abortions has taken place against the backdrop of a slight uptick in population (~4%). All of this in the abortion capital of the nation.
I do agree with Jill on the idea that surgical abortions per a certain population are decreasing is demonstrably true.
On the other hand, not protecting those infants lost through the that “secondary action” of abortive contraception is what will send many pro-lifers to Hell. Now, before people get up in arms saying I am judging them, Christ judges all of us (non-Christians don’t need to bother to concern themselves with this thought, of course, since they don’t believe in Christ or His Judgment).
In our modern era, though, we’ve turned Christ into some kind of marshmallow king, and we’ve forgotten, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So, while decreasing surgical abortion is a good thing, and a move in a good direction, what Nellie Gray said is completely true, and none of us are going to escape He who IS Truth.
To add to the very well-worded explanation by Rebecca, for any child to enter into his or her moment of conception as an “unwanted” child is to set that child up to be an unwelcome stranger. In Victorian times, this was well understood, and a common baby shower gift might be a little beaded pillow or some other sweet item with the wording, “Welcome, Little Stranger” on it. Our society has lost the sense of this sacred truth, and our children, even among many pro-life people, are “choices,” (sometimes the choice is for,sometimes it is against, but it is I, not God, who chooses whether or not life will begin within the context of my modern relationship of whatever sort it is). The child is not regarded as the utterly unique, irreplaceable human being he or she is, with as much right to live and breathe and be as you or I or anyone. And, now, we have the other extreme, where the child has become another kind of consumer product or modern-life accoutrement, like getting a dog or a cat, some”thing” I have a right to “because it is what I want.” So, now, the child is deprived of his or her right to belong to his or her own biological father and mother. Or, if the child turns out to be somehow “defective,” (a girl who’s supposed to be a boy, a ‘special needs’ child when we wanted one who’d be ‘perfect,’ or, coming soon, a brown-eyed one when we wanted a blue-eyed one), then he or she is a poor-quality “product” worthy of “disposal.”
I used to be a Methodist (who have embraced contraception and abortion and are increasingly embracing same-sex relations, btw), and there was NOTHING in that theology that called me to any responsibility whatsoever within a family context. I literally owe the existence of my children to Pope St. John Paul II allowing the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be published outside of the Church, and I bought my copy off a bargain book rack out of curiosity. Reading the passages on contraception was the blinding-light moment for me to realize, there was a right and a wrong and a true and a false. I literally owe my family to the Roman Catholic Church (the real one, not the false one that has been emerging in many places over the past few decades).
The first diabolical bitter divisions in a Christian population over the specific topic of contraception occurred in the Berkshire village of Ashfield among a church of Congregationalists–someday, soon, I feel it will be the final movement of the Sword of Truth, which cuts both ways–and a means of sorting the sheep from the goats.
The Comstock Laws made it illegal even to write about contraception, and materials offering advice on contraception were considered indecent and unfit for distribution. Griswold vs. Connecticut saw a striking down of a law against contraceptive practice. Sliding down that slippery slope, Eisenstadt vs. Baird gave unmarried people the same right to contraceptives as those married.
According to James Reed in his book From Private Vice to Public Virtue, the Congregationalist pastor in Ashfield had railed against the publication by Charles Knowlton of his booklet, Fruits of Philosophy; or, The Private Companion of Young Married People. Population controllers and the US government got involved to “evangelize” the public (their goal in 1969 was a “sustainable” American population of 266 million in 2000–their murderous plan missed a little–our 2000 population is recorded as having been 282.2 million–not sure how immigration factors in.)
Then the money began rolling in for entrepreneurs like Clarence Gamble, who actually competed against Planned Parenthood for “market share” by pushing for surgical sterilization as a better alternative to people than the hormonal potions and IUD technologies being widely distributed–but, make no mistake, his motivator was money.
Doctors were bribed with per-patient cash rewards to spread this new “gospel” of birth limitation born in the Freethinker movement, but it still encountered resistance by some doctors who were worried that State Medicine, “medical socialism” would result.
This fascinating book of Reed’s traces the history of the birth control movement, and it’s interesting it says on its jacket that the population explosion after WWII resulted, at last, in the “social impramatur” which completed the transformation of contraception from a private vice to a public virtue.
The impramtur of a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church has traditionally meant for the Catholic Faithful, this book is not one to cause you to stumble in living out your Christian Faith.
Now we have all kinds of private vices made into public virtues–no-fault divorce, abortion, and the whole “rainbow agenda.” Every last bit of this evil rests on the foundation of contraception.
I cannot get over pro-life advocates, some very educated, some who are doctors, who still stick their heads in the sand with regard to the abortive action of “regular” hormonal contraception. How does anyone believe they can hide from Almighty God?
There is more than one pro-life entity to point to Christ speaking to the women wailing over Him on his Way of Sorrows to be crucified, “Weep not for Me, but for your selves and your children, for the days are coming when they shall say, blessed are the wombs which never bore…” That scripture ties in totally with the one in Revelation which foretells the time when every person will call on the hills and mountains to fall on them and to cover them, to hide them from “the wrath of the Lamb.”
The Lord sets before us today the choice between life or death. Every Christian had better think and consider and step ever so carefully–discerning, which way is the Narrow Way to Eternal Life and which way is the Broad Road that leads to Destruction?