"If you start on abortion, you don't get off abortion."
Part Two of Two

Editor's note. Please send your thoughts to daveandrusko@hotmail.com

I read many--I mean many--news stories about the Guttmacher Institute findings released Thursday concluding that abortions have plunged a remarkable 8% between 2000 and 2005. But since I could read only a portion, I decided it'd be best to focus in Part Two on points of particular interest in some of the major news outlets.

I wouldn't know the exact number but the Associated Press account by David Crary would have been carried by a awful lot of papers. Coincidentally, yesterday's story was awful.

While it has some of the basic information down pat, there is not a word from the pro-life side explaining why we believe the number of abortions dropped to 1.2 million in 2005 from over 1.3 million. In places it reads like a preening self-promoting press release from the Guttmacher Institute.

At the other end, there was Stephanie Simon's account in the Los Angeles Times. The story honors what I was taught in Journalism School to be the obligations of any story, especially one dealing with as controversial a topic as abortion.

For one thing, our voice was also heard loud and clear. For another, the Guttmacher Institute is put in context. "The research was conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that focuses on reproductive issues. The institute supports abortion rights and has received funding in the past from Planned Parenthood." (Even that does not convey how closely aligned Guttmacher and PPFA have been in the past.)

For another, the story allows the reader to appreciate the report's wider context.

"Led by Planned Parenthood, activists have pledged to spend much of 2008 lobbying for laws to make all forms of birth control cheaper and more widely accessible. They also plan to push states to require sex-education classes that teach teens about contraception.

"A political tactics manual recently developed for Planned Parenthood asserts that voters respond well to such issues -- especially when they're framed with buzzwords like 'prevention,' 'protection' and 'personal responsibility.'

"Dwell too much on abortion, and the broader liberal agenda will bog down, said Kathy Bonk, a consultant who developed the strategy. 'It matters where you start the conversation,' she said. 'If you start on abortion, you don't get off abortion.'"

Many stories zeroed in on an important transformation. While some stumbled over a "decrease" in "abortion providers" (which was tiny), most got the main point right. As Judy Peres of the Chicago Tribune put it, " A growing number of health-care providers, including some that did not do surgical abortions, now offer abortions by medication, the survey found.

"Fifty-seven percent of known abortion providers offer the abortion drug, compared with 33 percent in early 2001. Medication abortion accounted for 13 percent of all abortions performed in 2005, and 22 percent of those performed prior to nine weeks' gestation."

In case you didn't notice, abortionists and their allies are avoiding like the plague the phrase "chemical" abortions to describe abortions that result from the use of the abortifacient RU-486. The old euphemism de jour was "medical" abortions. Now it's even more oblique--"medication" abortion--which sounds more like Vick's cough syrup than it does the purposeful destruction of a human life.

A few referenced a comment from Pomona College political science professor John Seery, who "studies the politics of abortion." As  ABC News online describes it, Seery "has his own theory, which he calls the 'Juno' effect after the current movie in which a young woman decides to keep her baby for personal not political reasons. He said the movie reflects a cultural shift in the country. 'I think the filmmakers were onto something,' Seery said."

For whatever this tells us, when you look Prof. Seery up online, you'd find that he is stridently pro-abortion.

There are ten more items we could discuss, but let me end with the most important, in my opinion. As noted above, a lot more "providers" (an increase of 70% since 2001) are including RU-486 abortions in their lethal repertoire or are using only  RU-486 to abort.

We are led to believe this is an unambiguous good. Virtually nothing is mentioned about how dangerous RU-486 is to women.

Ironically, the only place I saw this addressed at any depth was in the story by NPR. Let me quote directly:

"'RU-486 is killing women,' said Cathy Ruse, senior fellow for legal studies at the Family Research Council. 'Twelve women have died from RU-486, and there have been hundreds of reports of serious adverse health consequences,' she said. 'Serious life-threatening hemorrhaging, 400 reports of required surgery following RU-486 -- it's a serious problem.'"

Finally, it's good that many stories helped the readers understand what the decrease in the death toll actually means by providing more specific illustrations (and comparisons). For instance, that there was a 9% decline in the abortion rate and abortion ratio between 2000 and 2005. And how telling it was when the 2005 abortion rate--19.4 per 1,000 women age 15-44--was contrasted with what the abortion rate had been at its peak --29.3 in 1981.

Likewise, illustrating how huge the shift was some stories pointed out that nearly 1 in 3 pregnant women chose abortion in the early 1980s, compared to 2005 when the proportion was closer to 1 in 5!

I trust many of you are participating in events commemorating the hideous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, or already have. Keep firmly in mind (however many media accounts may pretend otherwise) that millions and millions of unborn children are alive today because of your efforts.

Talk to you Monday.

Part One