{"id":98668,"date":"2016-08-05T17:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=98668"},"modified":"2016-08-31T14:01:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T18:01:22","slug":"nice-try-daily-beast-but-texas-is-not-lying-to-women-about-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/nice-try-daily-beast-but-texas-is-not-lying-to-women-about-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice try, Daily Beast, but Texas is not lying to women about abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The abortion industry is built on lies<\/a>\u2014lies to the general public, lies to women, lies to students, lies to the government, and lies to the media. Unfortunately, that last group is more than happy to be lied to.<\/p>\n

At the Daily Beast, Samantha Allen dutifully recites<\/a> the bogus meme that pro-lifers are the real liars, by attacking the latest draft<\/a> of Texas\u2019s \u201cA Woman\u2019s Right to Know\u201d booklet, which the state mandates be given to women 24 hours before an abortion.<\/p>\n

Predictably, her case that the booklet is \u201criddled with lies\u201d and shows a clear \u201cintent to dissuade women from choosing abortion\u201d (the latter of which is a feature, not a bug) is the real list of falsehoods. (By the way, the copy she\u2019s reviewing is a draft, not a finalized version currently going out to women.)<\/p>\n

First, Allen attacks it for suggesting that babies are capable of feeling pain by 20 weeks, which she claims \u201cdirectly contradicts current scientific consensus.\u201d The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists even told Texas that fetal pain was \u201cideological rather than scientific\u201d!<\/p>\n

\"2nd

2nd trimester, 20 weeks<\/p><\/div>\n

Unfortunately, the ACOG has<\/a> its own track record<\/a> of ideology<\/a> trumping science<\/a>. So does<\/a> the American Medical Association, whose 2005 report Allen cites as part of the \u201cconsensus\u201d\u2026the very same report AMA refuses<\/a> to retract<\/a> despite three of its five authors having direct ties to the abortion industry and pro-abortion advocacy groups and despite being contradicted by more recent findings showing fetal pain is possible without a cortex.<\/p>\n

Second, Allen complains that the booklet details established risks of abortion<\/a> without saying that abortion is still fourteen times safer than childbirth. Maybe because it isn\u2019t. For one thing, abortion underreporting is severely obscuring the truth; for instance, one 2011 investigation by the Chicago Tribune found 4,000 underreported abortion complications and six deaths<\/a> in Illinois alone, just in one year.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Professor Priscilla Coleman of Bowling Green State University challenged<\/a>\u00a0the oft-cited claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth, noting that the previous study claiming abortion’s safety\u00a0suffered from severe underreporting of abortion data, wrongly classified deaths due to abortion as pregnancy deaths, and failed to consider abortions past the first trimester.<\/p>\n

Another study the next year, from West Virginia University-Charleston\u2019s Obstetrics & Gynecology Dept.\u2019s vice chair Dr. Byron Calhoun,\u00a0also deemed the number bogus<\/a>\u00a0for similar reasons. Also in 2013, Coleman and the Elliot Institute\u2019s Dr. David Reardon examined 30 years of data<\/a>\u00a0from women in Denmark and found that abortion at 12 weeks or earlier was linked to an 80 percent higher<\/em> risk of death within a year of the procedure, and 40 percent higher within 10 years.<\/p>\n

Third, Allen knocks the booklet for suggesting a possible link between abortion and breast cancer. But in 2009, Dr. Louise Brinton, head of the National Cancer Institute\u2019s Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, co-authored a study<\/a>\u00a0in the peer-reviewed Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention<\/em>, concluding that abortion increases a woman\u2019s risk of breast cancer by 40 percent. Further<\/a>, a 2013 meta-analysis out of China, published in the peer-reviewed\u00a0Cancer Causes and Control<\/em>, found a single abortion raises the breast cancer risk by 44 percent, a second raises it by 76 percent, and a third by 89 percent, while a 2013 study in the\u00a0Indian Journal of Community Medicine<\/em>\u00a0found a history of abortion multiplies a woman\u2019s breast cancer risk six-fold. (See also\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But never mind that, because Allen has an ACOG-approved study from the National Cancer Institute that says there\u2019s \u201cno overall risk.\u201d What you won\u2019t learn from Allen, though, is that her study is from 2003. What you will<\/em> learn from my colleague Robin Keahey<\/a> is that the 2003 study was headed by the same Louise Brinton who came to the opposite conclusion six years later in the study I mentioned above. Gee, I wonder what motive NCI would have for relying on older, outdated information from the same researcher\u2026<\/p>\n

Next, Allen objects that the booklet warns that abortion can increase the risk of future infertility without stressing how rare the possibility is (or that it can be reversed)\u2014again, all because ACOG says so (noticing a pattern here)? ACOG puts the odds of injury to the mother\u2019s organs during a second-trimester abortion at \u201cless than 1 in 1,000,\u201d don\u2019t you know.<\/p>\n

\"levatino-ad-LAN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It may indeed be rare, and perhaps Texas should reflect that (though again, we\u2019re talking about a non-final draft). However, I wouldn\u2019t be too confident of the rarity after hearing this expert opinion from an abortionist quoted by<\/a> the pro-abortion Salon<\/em>: \u201cThere are only two kinds of doctors who have never perforated a uterus: those that lie and those who don\u2019t do abortions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Allen attacks the booklet for claiming, without citation, that \u201cwomen have reported experiencing \u2018regret,\u2019 \u2018grief,\u2019 \u2018lowered self-esteem,\u2019 \u2018sexual dysfunction,\u2019 \u2018avoidance of emotional attachment,\u2019 and \u2018substance abuse\u2019 after an abortion.\u201d ACOG (of course) is flat-out lying when it says such claims are \u201cnot based on scientific evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

You want scientific evidence and citations? I\u2019ve got scientific<\/a> evidence<\/a> and citations<\/a>:<\/p>\n