{"id":298303,"date":"2023-09-11T06:42:36","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T11:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=298303"},"modified":"2023-09-11T21:20:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T02:20:59","slug":"mainstream-media-misleads-guttmacher-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/mainstream-media-misleads-guttmacher-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream media misleads on preliminary Guttmacher abortion estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>) [On September 7], the Guttmacher Institute released new abortion estimates<\/a>\u00a0for the first six months of 2023. Their findings purportedly indicate that there has been an abortion increase since the\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision. The Guttmacher estimates indicate that, when compared to the first six months of 2020, approximately 46,000 more abortions took place in 2023 \u2014 an increase of approximately 9.9 percent. These new abortion estimates have already been covered by a number of media outlets, including the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0Yahoo News<\/em>, the\u00a0Hill<\/em>, CNN, and NPR. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream-media spin has been that pro-life laws enacted since the\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision have been in effective at reducing the incidence of abortion.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, there is much less here than meets the eye. This is for several reasons. First, these new abortion estimates are based on samples of abortion facilities, not comprehensive surveys. Guttmacher provides 90 percent confidence intervals that often reflect a great deal of potential variance in their state-level abortion estimates. For Georgia, their upper abortion estimate is over 80 percent higher than their low estimate. For Florida, their upper estimate is more than 11,000 abortions higher than their low estimate. This much variation raises serious questions about the accuracy of their estimates.<\/p>\n

Additionally, not all of the abortion increases in politically liberal states are due to more out-of-state women seeking abortions. Part of the increase is likely due to a recent national trend.<\/p>\n

Between 2017 and 2020, data from both the CDC and Guttmacher found a slight increase in the incidence of abortion. Also, part of the increase can be attributed to some blue states\u2019 having made their abortion policy even more permissive. In recent years Illinois, Maine, and Rhode Island have all started to cover elective abortion through their respective state Medicaid programs. Finally, part of the increase is likely due to CDC policies that have made chemical abortions easier to access \u2014 specifically, policies allowing women to obtain chemical-abortion pills without an in-person medical exam.<\/p>\n