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Spreading myths and lies about pro-lifers and about the reality of abortion

Jul 7, 2020

By Dave Andrusko

“These sorts of falsehoods coming from abortion supporters are perhaps the best evidence of the strength of the pro-life argument. It is far easier to spread myths and lies about pro-lifers, dismissing us as crazy religious zealots, than to confront the possibility that our argument is true and that abortion is unjust killing”—Alexandra DeSanctis, National Review Online.

Interesting sometimes how reading two articles back-to-back (one from a pro-lifer, the other from a veteran pro-abortion scribe) can provide mutually reinforcing insights.

The above quote comes from a post written today by the talented Ms. DeSanctis. She is much more polite than I am in critiquing the Instagram musings of New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz whose beat is “Internet culture.”

DeSanctis lays out a few of Ms. Lorenz’s latest pro-abortion fantasies.  DeSanctis writes, “Lorenz shared several posts from pro-abortion feminist Liz Plank, all of which contained inaccurate and intentionally vague assertions about the nefarious pro-life movement.”

Judging by the quotes, Plank is wrong factually about as thoroughly as you could be and, as is typical with pro-abortionists, she essentially argues the pro-life movement was birthed in hell and nurtured by Satan. I exaggerate but only slightly.

There are pro-abortion scholars whose interpretations and  conclusions I thoroughly disagree with but whose research is worth reading. Plank assuredly does not fall into the latter category. 

DeSanctis’ point, as illustrated by the opening quote and summarized in the following passage, is

Utter falsehoods like those crafted by Plank and spread by Lorenz serve a key purpose of the abortion-rights supporter: to ignore or deny, by any means necessary, the sincerity of the pro-life movement, so as not to have to grapple with the heart of our argument.

Speaking of the heart of our argument and what should I run across next? “The study that debunks most anti-abortion arguments.” Written for the New Yorker by Margaret Talbot, it is 100% uncritical, even celebratory, piece on the [in]famous “Turnaway Study.”

We—particularly Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRL Director of Education & Research–have critiqued this study over and over and over again. It will not die. The team at University of California -San Francisco (UCSF) that first put it together and published the results in 2007,  recycles the same misleading data year after year after year.

It purports to tell us the differing experiences of those women who had their abortions and those who were “turned away” (hence the title) most often because the baby was so far along. Or, as Dr. O’Bannon put it, originally, it was “a five-year-long study that was supposed to be designed to determine the social, psychological, and economic consequences of having an abortion versus being ‘denied’ an abortion in some cases because the pregnancy was so advanced.”

The latest iteration came out last February. Dr. O’Bannon, unlike Ms. Talbot, closely examined where the study came up short (practically everywhere). To take just one example, in some earlier published studies, they did tell us what happened to women who went on to have their babies. But in the study from earlier this year, these women were conspicuously absent.

Here’s a long excerpt  from Dr. O’Bannon’s February analysis but it checks the nub of the many shortcomings.


The larger original study sample included some women who planned to have abortions but were unable to get them because they were too far along, because staff were not trained or equipped to do later abortions, or for other reasons. So why were none of them included in this study?  

The authors say “we exclude the Turnaway group because we could not assess emotions about the abortion or whether abortion was the right decision among women who did not have abortion.” 

They do not report the data here, but it is highly significant that elsewhere they admit that they did, in fact, ask these other women about the rightness of their decision after they were “denied” their abortion.

When they did, what did they find? Within a week after their “denial,” even before the baby was actually born, 35% of those women were no longer willing to say that having the abortion would have been the right decision. 

If attitudes could change this quickly and dramatically among women who (one must remember) were previously just as committed to having an abortion as the others in the study who did, it tells us that belief in abortion’s “rightness” is not inherent in the circumstance. 

It is less a considered, informed, personal moral judgment about or evaluation of the abortion decision and perhaps more about the human tendency to try to accept or adjust to whatever circumstances (or choices) life brings. 

Thus, this study tells us nothing about the objective “rightness” or wrongness of abortion or even the subjective “rightness” or wrongness for a woman’s situation. Women can live with being “denied” an abortion–and so can their children—and be happy about the outcome.

Again, this was just from women’s initial reaction to being told they could not have an abortion before the baby was born. From other “Turnaway” reports, we know that after the birth, 86% of those women “denied” abortions were living with the baby, 59% perceived their relationships as good or very good, and nearly half (48%) had full-time jobs.

These are pretty remarkable outcomes, given what the UCSF researchers tell us about the demographics of this sample. Most of these women were not upper or middle-class women with ideal social or economic prospects, but younger, poorer women likely facing many obstacles. These are considerably more positive consequences than the UCSF team would have led us to believe were likely or even possible for those women “denied” abortions.


Whether, as do Plank and Lorenz, pro-abortionists sink to smearing pro-lifers, or, as do the folks at UCSF (in cahoots with Ms. Talbot) you pretend that you have some awe-inspiring, settle-all-issues research, in either case, the case for abortion continues to fall flat on its face,

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