“Pro-life? That’s a lie! You don’t care if women die!” is a chant commonly heard outside pro-life meeting places. And this news item, reported with customary sympathy by the BBC, would seem to confirm the reasoning behind it. 70,000 women a year killed by those heartless fanatics who insist on restricting reproductive choice!
But there are some important facts that the news piece omits, as one commentator has pointed out.
Firstly, the Guttmacher Institute (which published the report) was founded by Planned Parenthood, the leading provider of abortions in the US. It was named after a former president of Planned Parenthood. Might there be a bias in its findings?
Secondly, the charts and statistics all look very pretty, but the figures are based on complete guesswork. This sort of data is impossible to collate, as the report’s various disclaimers imply.
Thirdly, in the absence of any reliable data, the Guttmacher Institute called on its friends like, erm, International Planned Parenthood. Good to see diversity of opinion there. As the Catholic Church is the largest provider of healthcare in much of the developing world, it’s strange that their opinions weren’t taken into account.
Fourthly, these figures have been falsified before. Just ask the founder of another US abortion provider, Bernard Nathanson, who has said:
"How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? …… it was always '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too.
Lastly, as well as an ideological incentive, there is a financial incentive for certain companies to indirectly push for legal abortion. Reproductive health is big business. In 2007-2008, while companies across the world were going bankrupt, Planned Parenthood made $81m profit, and its assets increased to $1bn.
However, while we have no idea how many deaths from illegal abortions there are, we do know that Planned Parenthood alone performed 300,000 abortions in 2007.