®® There are a number of myths about abortion that are held by most members of the public, common knowledge that “everyone knows” ― and which is completely wrong. The reason that so many people are misinformed about abortion, and the reason that many people support it, is because of the actions of what we call the “mainstream media” ― the television news, the print media in the form of newspapers and magazines, and to a lesser degree the entertainment media embodied by people we call “celebrities.”
There are many glaring examples of unequal media treatment of both “sides” of the abortion debate. When Todd Akin made his clumsy comment on “legitimate rape” and abortion during the 2012 elections, ABC, CBS and NBC ran 96 major stories focusing on the comment, and treated it as a major scandal. But the media has almost completely ignored abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors” abortion mill in Philadelphia, where he killed dozens of newborn babies by severing their spinal columns, killed an abortion patient, and made millions of dollars peddling pills on the black market.
The only people in the world who do not think that the news media is aggressively pro-abortion are ― the people who work in the media.
The problem with the news media is twofold: (1) Its members mindlessly repeat whatever pro-abortionists and population controllers tell them, and (2) Its members deliberately and consciously hide scientific facts that support pro-life beliefs.
® The media is not biased, which means that its members unconsciously inject their personal opinions into their reporting. Its members are corrupt, which means that reporters know they are slanting the news, and they uncritically repeat everything the pro-abortionists say and, in fact, actively suppress opposing viewpoints. In short, the media is an integral part of the pro-abortion movement, and its part of the overall strategy is to hide anything that would make abortion look bad and highlight ― or even manufacture ― stories that make pro-lifers look bad.
® Even pro-abortionists recognize ― and welcome ― this corruption. Susanne Millsaps of NARAL Pro-Choice America said way back in 1991 that “The media has been our best friend in this fight. They claim objectivity, but I know they’re all pro-choice.” And Boston Globe legal reporter Ethan Bronner wrote that “I think that when abortion opponents complain about a bias in newsrooms against their cause, they’re absolutely right. … Opposing abortion, in the eyes of most journalists … is not a legitimate, civilized position in our society.”
In the intervening decades, of course, the situation has gotten much worse. The media usually completely ignores hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers at the annual National March for Life, while writing long stories on a handful of pro-abortionists on the Supreme Court steps; it constantly talks about pro-life violence while ignoring much greater pro-abortion violence; and it pushes its agenda relentlessly, from amnesty for illegal aliens to the “gay” rights agenda.
One of the worst examples of this corruption is its handling of abortion-related violence. For example, when Scott Roeder walked into the Lutheran church where late‑term abortionist George Tiller was serving as an usher and shot him dead in 2009, the media wrote thousands of stories on the murder, portraying Tiller as a saint and the entire pro-life movement as a bunch of far-right, Bible-beating wingnuts. A few months later, when pro-abortionist Harlan Drake murdered pro-life activist Jim Pouillon, the first thing the media did was dig into Pouillon’s background and list every time he had ever had a brush with the law, right down to two parking tickets. They went so far as to seek out his family members in attempts to dig up dirt on him.
This bias and dishonesty of the media is almost universal, but there are a number of primary points that media people use to promote and excuse abortion and population control activities.
After decades of this barrage of misinformation and outright lies, most people accept the primary media deceptions about abortion without question. If you learn how to refute them, you will be a powerful advocate for human life.
These media myths are as follows:
® Media Myth #1: “The world is overpopulated, so we must have abortion and birth control.”
Whenever population control people or organizations use statistics to justify their claims regarding world overpopulation, their numbers are almost always either exaggerations or outright lies.
® Their most common allegation is that “88 million people are added to the world’s population each year.” According to the United Nations Population Information Network (POPIN), the annual world population increase peaked at about 88.8 million during the time period 1985‑1990. It will increase by about 64.2 million in 2013. The world population rate of increase will continue to decline steeply until world population peaks at about 8.1 billion and then begins to decline in about the year 2045. In fact, from the current 7.1 billion, the world’s population is projected to decline to about 6.2 billion by the end of this century.
In other words, the “population explosion” is over.
The second allegation is that “The population of the world doubles every 37 years.” Pro-abortionists and population controllers hope to frighten people into thinking that the current world population of about 7.1 billion will double to 14.2 billion by about the year 2050, double again to 28 billion by about the year 2087, and so on. But according to United Nations projections, the population of the world will never again double, as we have already seen!
® The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) committed perhaps the ultimate in alarmist propaganda when it distributed a one‑foot square of paper in the early 1980s that proclaimed on its borders that “If present birth rates continue, there will be one human being standing on every square foot of land on earth. Here’s a square foot. Try it. Stand on it. Then take a stand for Planned Parenthood!” So what Planned Parenthood was alleging is that there will eventually be 1.6 quadrillion people on this earth, or 223,000 people for every single person on the Earth today.
® Even alleged geniuses have gotten caught up in the hysteria. One example is Stephen Hawking, who said that “By the year 2600 the world population will be standing shoulder to shoulder and electricity consumption will make the Earth glow red hot.”
Propaganda aside ― the world has 236 nations with a 2013 population of about 7.1 billion, for an average of 51 people per square kilometer of land.
Eighty of these countries protect their preborn citizens completely or allow only strictly-monitored exceptions such as “life of the mother,” rape, incest and eugenics. However, these countries have only about 30 percent of the world’s population. 112 of the world’s nations offer little or no legal protection to their preborn citizens. Their laws allow either abortion on demand or the physical and mental “health of the mother” exceptions, which, in practice, means abortion on demand. The countries that offer little or no protection to preborn babies are home to about 70 percent of the world’s people and two of these countries (India and the People’s Republic of China) have 37 percent of the world’s population.
There are currently about 43 million surgical abortions being committed in the world each year. This appalling number steadily increased to a high of about 55 million since 1960, when there were about 40 million surgical abortions worldwide, then began to decrease. This means that, during the period 1960-2013, inclusive, surgical abortionists have killed about 2.5 billion babies ― a number equal to more than one-third of the world’s entire living population.
Abortion laws have a profound effect on the total fertility rates (TFRs) and population growth rates of nations. Nations with abortion on demand have a much lower TFR than those that protect their preborn citizens (2.1 children per “completed family” vs. 3.9), and have suffered much steeper declines in TFR since 1965.
Also, nations that provide little or no protection for their preborn citizens have less than half the population growth rate that nations that protect them do (0.84% vs. 1.59%).
The world’s TFR has plunged from 5.0 to a current figure of exactly replacement (2.2), and is projected to continue dropping to 1.5 or less by the year 2050.
® The world’s population growth rate peaked at 2.04% per year in 1965 and is now (2013) growing at about 0.9% per year. It will stop growing by the year 2045, with a peak population of about 8.1 billion, and then will begin to rapidly shrink, just as is now happening in Europe.
Population controllers tend to visit huge population centers in developing nations and then tell everyone who will listen that the world is crammed with people. This is like visiting a beehive and then telling everyone that the world is full of bees.
To show how few people there are in the world, the entire population of 7.1 billion could each have 1,100 square feet if everyone lived in;
® The State of Texas;
® Chile;
® France;
® Zambia;
® Myanmar (formerly Burma);
® New South Wales, a state in Australia;
® Quighai Province in China; or
® Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh States in India.
® Back in the 1950s, the average woman in the world had five children. Then the population control movement began its deadly work. Currently, the world’s total fertility rate ― the number of children each woman has ― is just over the replacement of 2.1. Within a decade, it will drop below replacement and, by the end of the century, the United Nations predicts that not a single nation on Earth will be replacing its population.
® All of this means that the population bomb may have landed, but it didn’t explode. In fact, underpopulation will be the greatest problem faced by the world in the second half of this century.
Another motivation of population controllers is a desire to preserve the environment, which is a good thing if not taken to ridiculous extremes.
® Newsweek Flip-Flops. Those who have been socially active and aware for a long time remember the 1970s, when scientists were unanimous in proclaiming that we were on the verge of a new 10,000 year ice age. In 1975, Newsweek Magazine said that “The central fact is that the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity.“
Then, as now, political correctness reigned. Anyone who questioned the “global cooling” dogma was shouted down and ridiculed.
Only seventeen years after Newsweek proclaimed the advent of a new Ice Age, it reversed itself completely and said in 1992 that “The atmosphere may be reaching the limit of its capacity to absorb emitted carbon dioxide without falling into a disastrous greenhouse effect.” Once again, those who do not accept this article of faith are attacked and mocked.
® Examples of Frightening Warnings. The mainstream media was just as apocalyptic in 1975 as they are now, though they have completely flip-flopped on climate change.
- The New York Times warned us that “A major cooling of the planet is widely considered inevitable.”
- The [London] Times worried that “This cooling trend could result in a return to another ice age.”
- Science News told us that “We are going to have a full-blown 10,000-year ice age involving extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
- And International Wildlife fretted that “A new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery.”
In other words, folks, make sure to take skis along for that honeymoon in the Caribbean.
Only a Part of the Truth. It is said that the blackest of lies is when someone tells you the truth, but only that part of the truth that they want you to hear. Certainly this is the case with the global warming debate, as it is with other social issues that the corrupted mainstream media tampers with.
® It is certainly true that the world’s climate is warming up. Since 1910, the world’s temperature has warmed up by about 0.9 degrees Centigrade, or about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
What they deliberately do not tell you is that this is part of a long-term cycle going back at least 4,500 years, as determined by ice core drilling near the poles.
® The average Earth temperature is cyclical, and we have experienced at least five warm spells and four cold spells since 2500 B.C. The “Little Ice Age” was at its most intense in about 1625, with an average global temperature of 56.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and has been steadily warming ever since. According to the pattern, the temperature will soon peak and then drop again.
The primary engine of global warming is the incidence of volcanoes, not the activities of man. The more volcanoes there are, the more dust there is in the air, and the greater reflectivity of the atmosphere. In fact, it was warmer in 1100 BC, the time of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, than it is now. And I think that we can safely say that the Hebrews did not drive a whole lot of gas-guzzling SUVs when they escaped Pharoah’s clutches.
® So what is going to happen in the near future regarding global warming?
Nobody really knows.
®® But if there is a cause of global warming we can pinpoint, it is this: The hot air put out by the global warming activists.
® Media Myth #2: “70,000 women die each year from unsafe abortion worldwide.”
® To begin with, we must consider the inflexible equations used by the population controllers. They think that every legal abortion is safe, and that every illegal abortion is unsafe. We know this, because as soon as the huge population control cartel legalizes abortion in a developing nation, they are content. They do not attempt to insure that legalized abortion is safe; they do not monitor or train the new abortionists; they just cross it off their list of nations that have so-called “unsafe” abortions.
The primary numbers alleged by the Guttmacher Institute in the USA are as follows. Every pro-abortion and population group repeats them, as does the media;
- there are 21.9 million “safe” abortions and 19.7 million “unsafe” abortions; and
- there are 70,000 abortion deaths a year with 8 million complications, almost all due to “unsafe” abortions.
Population controllers think that “illegal = unsafe” and that “legal = safe” regarding abortion. But how can this be, when the same people who perform abortions before it is legalized perform them after it is legalized?
® When abortion is legalized, more women die, and not only from physical complications of abortion. For example, in the USA, about 65 deaths were reported the year before abortion was legalized. Now, about a dozen women die of abortion (that we know of), but at least fifty women are murdered each year by their husbands or boyfriends because they refuse to have abortions (see http://www.abortionviolence.org), a Human Life International Web site. Pro-abortionists do not have science on their side, so they use an emotional appeal, claiming that thousands of poor, suffering women are dying in filthy back-alley abortion mills every year. They always grossly inflate the number of deaths when pushing for abortion legalization, as shown in just a few examples below;
®Country Claimed Deaths Actual Deaths Exaggeration
Russia 600,000 1,800 333 times
India 600,000 1,800 333 times
Brazil 400,000 241 1,660 times
Mexico 140,000 159 881 times
Africa 74,000 150 493 times
Italy 20,000 55 365 times
Germany 15,000 100 150 times
USA 10,000 65 250 times
Portugal 2,000 12 167 times
World 1,000,000 2,640 379 times
® In the United States, for example, a July 7, 1989 USA Today staff editorial alleged that “Before Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of women had illegal abortions [annually], and one in 10 of them died.” Since the number commonly alleged by pro-abortionists was two million illegal abortions annually, this would mean 200,000 deaths per year.
® Of course, USA Today was lying. According to official government figures, as far back as 1947, there were 593 abortion deaths in the United States. The year before Roe v. Wade, there were 65.
® Reformed abortionist Bernard Nathanson said that “How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL, 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 if they stopped to think of it. But it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the [abortion] laws eliminated …”
® In a nation where abortion is illegal, if a pro-abortion person alleges that there are many women dying of illegal abortions, their numbers are always created out of thin air. Always demand to see their documentation, and do not be deterred by vague claims that their numbers are based on “hospital statistics” or estimates based on “international statistics.” Demand to see the actual documents.
Often pro-abortionists will allege that they know women who have died of illegal abortions. For example, back in 1985, NARAL decided to hold a contest called the “Silent No More” Campaign. They hoped to gather tens of thousands of lurid stories of women who had had illegal abortions, whose mothers, sisters, daughters and aunts had died horribly at the hands of drunken butchers before abortion was legalized. NARAL planned to publicize these letters aggressively in order to influence public opinion on abortion.
NARAL advertised widely among its 200,000 members and the public, asking for letters detailing experiences with illegal abortions. NARAL proudly claimed that it received “Tens of thousands of letters” ― but, mysteriously, only 68 were submitted to the Congressional Record for publication on May 22nd, 1985, and even these were of truly wretched, even laughably horrible, quality.
For example, one rambling letter in the Record claimed that “Thirty‑five years ago I was pregnant ― my baby had died in 4th month of pregnancy but because of abortion being illegal I couldn’t have an abortion ― I had to carry that dead child for 5 months before I finally aborted it myself. I carried that child for 5 agonizing months knowing I was carrying a dead child ― please legalize abortion ― it must be pro choice.”
Anyone knowledgeable in even the basics of fetal development or obstetrics will realize that the situation described in the above letter is, at best, dubious from both the medical and legal standpoints.
It was revealing to note that most of NARAL’s letters were written not by women who were in truly desperate circumstances, but by women who wanted abortion to remain legal for purely convenience reasons.
NARAL and other pro‑abortion groups sponsored scores of public “readings” all over the country, where women would stand and read their letters of victimization before crowds of weeping sympathizers. All of these letters were similar in one critical respect: The `victim of illegal abortion’ was invariably anonymous. When pro‑life activists in several cities asked questions about the persons in the letters, they were met with shouts accusing them of “insensitivity!”
Perhaps the most spectacular story regarding a `victim’ of illegal abortion was provided Frank Mendiola, a Los Angeles homosexual and pro‑abortion activist. NARAL used his extremely graphic “Silent No More” story as the centerpiece of one of its national fundraising letters. This undated appeal listed “Frank, who wept as he told of his beloved twin sister, who bled to death from an illegal abortion after being brutally raped at the age of 14.”
Mendiola was very much in demand at pro‑abortion rallies. He would read his `open letter’ to President Reagan describing how his twin sister `Rose Elizabeth’ died from a botched illegal abortion. Mendiola sobbed about how “She bled to death on a kitchen table. Yes, Mr. President, on a kitchen table.”
It was not long before Mendiola’s story began to come apart at the seams under the glare of publicity surrounding a related matter. According to the December 10, 1987 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Mendiola called in numerous bomb threats to abortion clinics, abortionists, and even his own home so that “… you people, the media, will come down with a harder line on those people who are harassing the clinics.”
Further investigation into Mendiola’s background revealed that he had been lying about his `twin sister’ dying on a kitchen table, because he had no twin sister ― in fact, he was an only child!
® In other countries the situation is even worse, a raw appeal to emotion backed up by figures that are simply pulled out of the air. We like to say that “How can you tell when a population controller is lying? You watch his lips. When his lips are moving, he’s lying.”
The medical profession in general considers abortionists to be a necessary evil, and so they tend to be incompetents, drunks, drug addicts, and violent, often failing in other branches of medicine. Some of the hundreds of examples;
- Abortionist John Baxter Hamilton, who had a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife: A cinderblock, which he used to bash her head in. Local pro-abortionists not only blamed the murder on pro-lifers, but threatened the life of Baxter’s prosecutor dozens of times.
- Abortionist Malachy DeHenre, who was a little more original in killing his wife. He shot her, then put her body in her Mercedes and pushed her off a cliff.
- Abortionist Alicia Ruiz Hanna, who had no medical training at all, killed a mother of four during a botched abortion, and then tried to stuff her body into the trunk of her car. Police tend to notice when they drive by and see something like this, and she was convicted of murder.
- Abortionist John Biskind, who walked away and let an abortion client bleed to death.
- Abortionist Bruce Steir, who did the same, and was vocally supported by the pro-abortionists.
- Abortionist Brian Finkel sexually molested more than one hundred of his abortion clients while they were knocked out. Pro-abortion groups took his side, saying that every one of these women were lying.
- Abortionist Alan Zarkin, who was so proud of his work he signed it, by carving his initials into women’s abdomens.
® Just as an interesting comparison, the corrupt media seems to be transfixed by the eight “pro-life” murders that have been committed over the past two decades.
® Now compare this to the more than three hundred “pro-choice” murders we know of, most of which are boyfriends killing their pregnant girlfriends because they refuse to have abortions.
® Finally, add to this all of the fatal botched abortions committed by abortionists, and you can begin to see the relative degree of violence between the pro-life and “pro-choice” movements.
® So if we add up the total fatalities since Roe v. Wade in 1973, we can see that the “pro-choice” movement has more than one hundred killings for every single one committed by so-called “pro-life” people.
And which do you hear about more?
® In the United States, at least fifty women a year are murdered by their boyfriends or husbands because they refuse to have abortions.
See documentation at Human Life International’s “Abortion Violence” Web site.
® Media Myth #3: “Abortions are necessary for rape, incest, birth defects, and to save the life and health of the mother.”
In every nation of the world, pro-abortionists use these classic “hard cases” to agitate for abortion. Once again, they are appealing to emotions, not scientific fact.
® “Typical” abortion cases, according to the pro-abortionists, are;
- The 44‑year-old mother of nine children with uterine cancer who will die if she has another child;
- The 11‑year-old incest victim;
- The older mother carrying a baby with anencephaly who will die shortly after birth anyway; and
- The poor Black woman on welfare.
® The truth is far different from what the pro-abortion propagandists tell us. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is a research group that was associated with Planned Parenthood for decades, these are the real reasons that women have abortions;
- “I can’t afford a baby now” (21%)
- “I don’t want the responsibility” (21%)
- “A baby would change my life” (16%)
- “I have problems with my relationship” (12%)
- “I’m not mature enough” (11%)
- “I have enough children” (8%)
- “I want to keep my pregnancy secret” (1%)
- “My boyfriend/husband forced me” (1%)
- “The baby is deformed” (3%)
- “I was raped” (1%)
- “Pregnancy threatens my life/health” (1%)
® If we analyze the statistics provided by 1.29 million women reporting their abortions in six states, we find the following reasons for abortions;
Abortions for Rape and Incest ― 0.13%
Abortions for Birth Defects (eugenics) ― 0.59%
Abortions for the Mother’s Physical Life or Health ― 1.03%
Abortions for the Mother’s Mental Health ― 1.27%
Total “Hard Case” Abortions ― 3.01%
Total Abortions for Social Reasons ― 96.99%
® While pro-abortionists tell us that abortion must remain legal for the “hard cases,” they never tell us that the vast majority of abortions are done for social reasons ― to save the mother’s lifestyle, we might say. Several abortionists have admitted this;
- “Each and every pregnancy threatens a woman’s life. From a strict medical viewpoint, every pregnancy should be aborted” [abortionist Lise Fortier]
- “A medically necessary abortion is any abortion a woman asks for” [abortionist Jane Hodgson]
- “In my medical judgment, every pregnancy that is not wanted by the patient, I feel there is a medical indication to abort a pregnancy where it is not wanted. In good faith, I would recommend on a medical basis, you understand, that, and it would be 100% … I think they are all medically necessary … Occasionally we will advise these women to carry their pregnancy to term, but most of these are medically necessary because I am considering the woman’s physical, mental, emotional and social and welfare and family and environment and all that … I am concerned with the quality of life, not physical existence” [abortionist Jane Hodgson]
® Even the United Nations World Health Organization uses this sloppy terminology to justify abortion on demand all over the world. It says that “Health is … a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
The pro-life arguments against even the “hard cases” are irrefutable;
- Rape and Incest. These are the hardest of the “hard cases.” But once again, pro-life people are consistent in advocating the right to life of all preborn babies. We do not agitate for the death of the guilty rapist or molester; why then must the innocent baby die?
Imagine examining two newborn babies lying side by side ― one conceived within a loving marriage and one conceived as the result of a brutal rape or molestation ― and then ask which would be considered more human. If these two babies were laid side by side, could anyone identify the one who was conceived by rape or incest? Of course not! Then why select one baby for extinction based solely upon the circumstances of his or her conception? Additionally, as we have seen in the USA, abortion is the ideal cover-up for incest, because it destroys the evidence.
- Birth Defects. Abortions for birth defects (eugenics) are simple discrimination, because such babies are aborted based solely on whether or not they are handicapped. This implies that born people who are handicapped have less of a right to live than those who are not handicapped or are somehow less deserving. This is happening all over the world, as handicapped newborns are now being killed and starved to death.
- Life and Health of the Mother. As long ago as 1955, at a Planned Parenthood conference, the world’s leading experts agreed that there is no medical condition that can be improved by aborting a woman’s preborn child. As far as health is concerned, the World Health Organization definition of “maternal health” is “A state of complete physical, mental, and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This means that a “mother’s health” exception for abortion means abortion on demand.
There is one exception to this rule that everyone must be aware of, and it is covered under the principle of the “double effect.” If a woman’s life is threatened by a condition such as an ectopic pregnancy, the physician may perform a tubectomy, removing both the tube and the unborn child. The child will inevitably die, but this is not an abortion because the intent is not to kill the child but to save the life of the mother. These are very specific conditions, and the principle of the “double effect” must not be abused.
® Media Myth #4: “It’s her body, so she can do with it as she pleases.”
® Pro-life people agree that a woman does indeed have the right to control her own body. However, nobody has the right to destroy another person’s body. And a woman has already procreated when she conceived. The only question that remains is whether or not she will kill another person.
Some will argue that the preborn child is inside the mother and is totally dependent upon her, and so can be disposed of. But what is different about the newborn child, who is also totally dependent upon her? Does this mean that we can kill newborn babies as well?
And what about astronauts in the International Space Station? They are inside the space station and depend on it completely. If they leave it without wearing a million-dollar space suit, they will die in seconds. But nobody is crazy enough to suggest that astronauts are part of the space station.
®® This media myth makes no sense from a scientific viewpoint. If the baby were part of the woman’s body, it should be genetically identical to her, but it is not. Also;
- All mothers are obviously female. About half of their children are male. How can a human being be both male and female?
- The mother and baby frequently have different blood types.
- The baby can be a different race from the mother.
- When the preborn child anchors itself to the uterine wall at its early stage of life, there is a concerted attack by white blood cells to defeat it, and the child must defend itself. The mother’s immune system recognizes it as “non‑self.” Therefore, it is not part of her body.
- The baby can die without the mother dying. The mother can die without the baby dying (the baby can be rescued if he or she is viable.)
- The baby initiates a process that culminates in its leaving the mother’s body. No other part of the body does this.
® Media Myth #5: “We really don’t know when [human] life begins.”
®® This is a contemptible and cowardly claim which really means: “We don’t care when life begins!” Generally, if anyone says that they don’t know when life begins, they are admitting that abortion might be taking life, but that they really don’t care one way or the other. After all, if a moral person is uncertain of whether or not an action will take human life, he will refrain from taking that action. In matters of public safety, we always err on the side of life!
As one example, say you are on a hunting trip and see bushes moving around in front of you. “Pro-choice” reasoning would say “go ahead and shoot at it, because we really don’t know if there is a person behind that bush or not.”
Pro-abortionists who claim that the unborn child is not alive are being unscientific and are relying on superstitious hocus-pocus upon which to base their erroneous opinions.
® The preborn child meets all of the scientific and legal conditions for life by the time he or she is only five weeks old ― beating heart, measurable brainwaves, consuming nutrition, excreting wastes, and so on.
® Every embryology and fetology textbook states that life begins at fertilization. Some examples;
- “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo)” [The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (2003, 7th Edition), page 16:2].
- “Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the female gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote” [Langman’s Medical Embryology (2006, 10th Edition), page 11].
- “[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being” [Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology (2008, 3rd Edition), page 2].
® Take any cell from a preborn baby ― eye cell, skin cell, liver cell, any cell at all ― and any microbiologist can tell you that it is both living and human by examining its chromosomes.
® We like to say that “The unborn child is a living human being … because the embryology textbook tells me so!” Anyone who denies this is just being unscientific.
® Often pro-abortion people use the term “potential life” to describe the preborn child. This is obviously a nonsense term concocted only to confuse the issue. Every entity on the face of the earth, animate or inanimate, is either “alive” or “not alive.” Bacteria, cattle, and people are alive. Clouds, rocks, and corpses are not alive. There is no “in‑between” term, because either an entity possesses the spark of life or it does not.
® Those who maintain that the preborn child is not alive must prove this if they want to kill it. But this is impossible, of course, so they ignore the question.
® Media Myth #6: “Third-trimester abortions are rare or nonexistent.”
® During the 1995 battle over dilation and extraction, or D&X abortions (also called partial-birth abortions) in the United States Congress, pro-abortionists lied over and over again about the procedure.
First they lied by saying that all of these partial-birth abortions were necessary to complete a safe delivery.
Then they lied when they said that the unborn child always dies of anesthesia overdose before the partial-birth abortion.
Then they lied when they said that the unborn child does not feel pain during the partial-birth abortion procedure.
Finally, they lied when they claimed that these abortions are only done in the most extreme circumstances, such as fatal birth defects and to save the life of the mother.
® For example, the National Abortion Federation, the trade union for abortion mills, claimed that “This particular procedure [D&X abortion] is used only in about 500 cases per year, generally after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and most often when there is a severe fetal anomaly or maternal health problem detected late in pregnancy.”
Remember that number: 500 per year.
Planned Parenthood chimed in with this gem: “The procedure, dilation and extraction (D&X), is extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality.”
Remember that allegation too: All partial-birth abortions are done to save the mother’s life or for fatal birth defects.
® But the partial-birth abortionists themselves contradict the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood, showing that they are lying;
- Marvin Haskell, inventor of the partial-birth abortion, said that 80 percent of the procedures he performs are “purely elective.”
- James McMahon says that the primary reason he does partial-birth abortions is for “depression.”
- Even the National Abortion Federation said in an internal memo just two years before it lied before Congress that most partial‑birth abortions are performed for such reasons as “lack of money or health insurance, social‑psychological crises, lack of knowledge about human reproduction, etc.”
- ® Third-trimester abortionist George Tiller said at the 1995 National Abortion Federation conference in New Orleans “We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.” This means that Tiller alone did 2,000 partial-birth abortions every single year, and only eight percent of them were for birth defects.
Remember the previous quote by the National Abortion Federation claiming that only 500 were done every year in the entire country? I guess it’s true that a lie has to have a good memory. The National Abortion Federation certainly does not.
® All of this lying caused Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), to complain “When you’re a doctor who does these abortions and the leaders of your movement appear before Congress and go on network news and say these procedures are done in only the most tragic of circumstances, how do you think it makes you feel? You know they’re primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirty little abortionist with a dirty little secret. I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on.”
® Once again, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute kindly gives us the truth, backed up by statistics. These are the reasons women have late-term abortions;
Woman misjudged gestation 31%
Hard to arrange abortion 27%
Afraid to tell parents or partner 14%
Took her time deciding 9%
Waited for relationship change 4%
Someone pressured her to wait 2%
Something changed after pregnancy 1%
Didn’t know she could get late abortion 2%
Fetal anomaly 1%
Other reasons 9%
Remember that Planned Parenthood claimed that all partial-birth abortions are done for fatal birth defects or to save the life of the mother? It turns out that the actual number is about one percent.
Pro-abortionists often dismiss pro-life concerns by saying that there are “only a few” third-trimester abortions.
It is true that only a small percentage of abortions are performed in the third trimester. But the number of abortions that have been done is so huge that even one percent is a large number.
® Since the first states legalized abortion in 1967, there have been 55,128,300 legal abortions done in the United States as of January 1, 2013.
This means that 5,518,700 abortions have been done in the second trimester and 581,600 in the third trimester.
® And then, of course, we have what the “pro-choice” people like to call “fourth trimester” or “after birth” abortions. Kermit Gosnell routinely delivered full-term babies in his Philadelphia abortion mill and then severed their spinal columns with scissors. This was done with the full knowledge of the National Abortion Federation, which had inspected his clinic, and other pro-abortionists.
Not one major so-called “pro-choice” group has condemned Gosnell. They are willing to say that he is the exception, not the rule, and that is as far as they will go. In fact, they are blaming pro-lifers, as usual, for the deadly messes they make.
® Media Myth #7: “Most Americans are `pro-choice’.”
This has been repeated by the corrupt media and by pro-abortion ad campaigns so many times that it has become what we call “common knowledge” ― everyone “knows” it is true, but really don’t know why it is true.
® At first glance, it may seem that Americans are, indeed, “pro-choice.” Almost every poll taken shows that Americans support Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalizes abortion. But the media, which seems eager to dig deeper regarding every other topic, is notoriously slothful when it comes to abortion. If the immediate, fleeting first impression agrees with their own pro-abortion worldview, corrupt and lazy reporters have no motivation to dig deeper.
If we think beyond the superficial level that reporters are stuck at, we find something very interesting: Typically, polls represent Roe v. Wade as legalizing abortion in the first trimester only.
® Typical wording in such a poll is the October 2007 Harris poll, which stated “In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that state laws which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy were unconstitutional, and that the decision on whether a woman should have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy should be left to the woman and her doctor to decide. In general, do you favor or oppose this part of the U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortions up to three months of pregnancy legal?”
Notice the strong emphasis on the phrase “three months of pregnancy,” which is repeated three times in just one short paragraph, deliberately giving the impression that abortion is legal for just three months, instead of the reality, which is that it is legal through all nine months of pregnancy.
The result of this particular poll was 56 percent supported Roe v. Wade and 40 percent thought it should be overturned.
To get a better grasp of what Americans really think about abortion, we look to the Gallup trending opinion poll on the topic.
This poll asks exactly the same questions ― not one single word is changed ― about abortion year after year of a large number of people. This means that we can get an accurate feel for the changing attitudes of Americans toward abortion.
® The most revealing question of this poll is “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?”
In 1995, only 33 percent of Americans described themselves as “pro-life,” and 56 percent described themselves as “pro-choice.”
But ever since 1995, pro-lifers have been gaining ground. In fact, in 2012, exactly half of Americans described themselves as “pro-life” ― a huge gain of 17 percent, or exactly one percent per year. Meanwhile, only 41 percent of Americans described themselves as “pro-choice,” a loss of nearly one percent a year and 15 percent less than in 1995.
This shows that pro-life efforts are having an effect. The partial-birth abortion battle horrified Americans and had a huge influence. But pro-lifers are also developing an alternative media that is reaching millions of people. The nation’s 3,000 crisis pregnancy centers are educating two million young women a year about fetal development and about abortion alternatives. And, of course, we have demographics. Pro-life families simply have more children than pro-abortion families.
® The Gallup Trending Poll on abortion shows that pro-lifers have made significant gains in 18 out of 19 categories over the time period 2001 to 2012 among men, women, all age groups, all levels of education, in all areas of the nation, and in all political parties. The only category which is less pro-life is atheists ― and even then, there is a loss of only one point.
Pro-Life in;
Category 2001 2012 Gain
Men 52% 57% 5%
Women 51% 55% 4%
18-34 47% 54% 7%
College 43% 53% 10%
Christian 57% 62% 5%
Atheist 24% 23% -1%
Independents 30% 47% 17%
As we saw before, “hard case” abortions make up only about three percent of all abortions done. Not surprisingly, Americans support these abortions by various margins. But they do not support abortions for social reasons.
® Americans support abortions to save the life of the mother by an 83% to 13% margin. But these abortions only make up about 1 out of 600 of all abortions. They support abortions to preserve the woman’s health by a margin of 82% to 15%. But these abortions only make up about 1 out of 120 of the abortions that are performed. They support abortions to preserve the mental health of the mother by 61% to 35%. These are about one out of eighty abortions. They support the availability of eugenic abortions for serious birth defects, which comprise about one out of 160 of all abortions. Finally, they support abortions for rape and incest by 75% to 22%, but these are only about one out of 800 abortions. In summary, then, Americans support the “hard case” abortions which make up three percent of all abortions.
But we oppose the 97 percent of abortions that are done for social, economic or convenience reasons by a margin of 61 percent to 36 percent. 82 percent of all abortions, for example, are done on unmarried women.
As we might expect, most Americans support first-trimester abortions, which follows from the polls that say most Americans support Roe v. Wade (as long as the false impression is given that it legalized abortions in the first trimester only).
But large majorities of Americans think that second-trimester abortions should be illegal by a huge margin of 71% to 24%, and we think third-trimester abortions should be illegal by a crushing 86%-10% margin. When we talk about these poll results, pro-abortionists tend to want to change the subject quickly.
® Americans also favor various laws intended to protect the health and informed consent of women. Yet pro-abortionists oppose all of these measures in court, showing that they really don’t care about the public opinion polls, unless they can somehow be spun as supporting abortion.
Favor Oppose
24-hour waiting periods before an abortion 69% 28%
Girls under 18 must have parental consent 71% 27%
Informed consent for the woman on dangers of abortion 87% 11%
Woman must see ultrasound before an abortion 50% 46%
Husband must be notified of wife’s abortion 64% 34%
Women informed of alternatives to abortion 88% 11%
® What does all of these numbers mean in the long run? They mean this: If abortion was put to a nationwide referendum tomorrow, Americans would vote to ban 97 percent of all abortions.
® Media Myth #8: “Men have no right to speak out against abortion.”
® The old hypocrisy meter is definitely pegged on this one.
Pro-abortion people tell us all the time about how men should just shut the hell up and butt out of the abortion decision because it’s her body and she can do whatever she wants with it.
® For example, on one smarmy Saturday Night Live episode, Nasim Pedrad said “If men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be like Starbucks. There would be two on every block and four in every airport ― and the morning after pill would come in different flavors like sea salt and cool ranch,” while a smirking Seth Meyers watched.
As we have already shown, the unborn child is certainly not part of a woman’s body. This is a regressive and unscientific opinion.
Of course, the pro-abortionists will certainly not tell you to shut up if you are a man and you speak out for abortion.
® In 1973, nine old men on the Supreme Court of the United States gave us abortion on demand. Did the feminists tell them to shut up and butt out because they couldn’t get pregnant? And we have had a parade of predatory United States Senators, from “Lightning Lips” Bob Packwood of Oregon to “Teddy Bear” Kennedy of Massachusetts, talking about abortion constantly. And it was common knowledge that Arizona abortionist Brian Finkel raped and sexually abused scores of his abortion patients while they were unconscious during his procedures. But despite their preying on women, these men were welcomed at “pro-choice” rallies, which shows you where their priorities lie. With pro-abortion zealots, abortion always ranks ahead of the health and welfare of women.
If you are male and pro-choice, you have matured in your view on women’s sexuality, they say. If you are male and pro-life, you hate women, it is a simple as that. That is how central abortion is to their mentality.
® But the validity and truth of an argument has absolutely nothing to do with a person’s sex, age, race, or any other variable. If a statement or an argument is true, then it is true ― it does not matter who is saying it! Anyone who says that men may not speak out against abortion is, by definition, anti-male.
® If men cannot speak on abortion because they can’t get pregnant, then women should not speak about war if they can’t be in an armed force, white people should not speak about racism if they have not been discriminated against, and women should be prohibited from speaking about sports that only include men. These parallel examples show just how illogical this pro-abortion “women only” argument really is.
® Pro-abortion leaders say that, since men cannot become pregnant, then they should have no voice about abortion. But many of their women leaders are beyond the age where they can have children, so what gives them the right to speak for abortion?
® Nancy Pelosi, a so-called “Catholic” who pushes abortion relentlessly, is 73 years old.
Molly Yard, former president of the National Organization for Women, was 83 years old when she died, and was still pushing abortion.
Frances Kissling, longtime president of the pro-abortion group “Catholics” for a Free Choice, is 70 years old.
Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is 70 years old.
Faye Wattleton, former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the largest chain of abortion mills in the country, is 69 years old.
They can’t get pregnant any more than men can! So what gives them the right to speak?
® Media Myth #9: “You can’t legislate morality!”
® This is one of the silliest assertions made by the pro-abortion movement.
® Of course we can legislate morality. This is the purpose of every law that has ever been written. If anyone ever tells you that you can’t legislate morality, you can stop them cold by asking them to name a law that does not legislate morality in some way.
To say that we cannot legislate morality means advocacy of absolute and total anarchy. The extensive legislating of morality is absolutely essential to the survival of any society.
® One purpose of this slogan is to try to cast abortion, euthanasia, pornography and other issues as Church/State conflicts. People who use this media myth assert that anyone who tries to outlaw some immoral act is doing so out of a purely religious motivation. This is an attempt to sideline religious believers from the political process, and we must not tolerate it.
® Most laws are based on the Ten Commandments. Does this mean that we should just throw them all away?
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Laws against murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, attempted suicide, mutilation of both living and dead persons, possession of unregistered firearms, drunkenness, drunken driving, reckless endangerment, kidnapping, and the sale and use of illegal or dangerous drugs.
- Thou Shalt Not Steal: Laws against robbery, fraud, shoplifting, stealing, larceny, theft, insider trading and embezzlement.
- Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: Laws against libel, slander, and perjury (lying under oath).
All of these laws legislate morality, and all of them are based on the Ten Commandments.
® Media Myth #10: “Every child must be a wanted child!”
Pro-abortion people believe that “unwantedness” leads to abuse, and that, if all children are “wanted,” child abuse will decrease. However, if a child’s degree of desirability to its parents is the measure of its worth, then it is simply dehumanized and made into an object.
® Right after abortion was legalized in the United States, NARAL heartlessly seized on the epidemic of child abuse as an excuse to promote abortion. It said that “Legal abortion will decrease the number of unwanted children, battered children, child abuse cases, and possibly subsequent delinquency, drug addiction, and a host of social ills believed to be associated with neglectful parenthood.”
® The opinion that children are only valued as much as they are wanted obviously opens the door to child abuse. For example, abortion has increased, not decreased, the amount of child abuse in the United States. The reported rate of child abuse in the USA has tripled from 1972 to 1995, and the rate of fatal child abuse cases also tripled during this time period.
Cases of Child Abuse
Substantiated Rate Per
Year Child Abuse 1,000 Children
1972 199,289 2.9
1980 376,104 6.1
1985 637,389 10.4
1990 801,143 12.7
1995 1,000,502 14.6
® The “wanted child” slogan is truly hideous, because it assigns worth to a human life based purely on the whim of another person ― in this case, a child’s mother. Naturally, this logic could also be applied to born children just as easily as it could to preborn children. Not surprisingly, the rate of murders of newborn children and infants in the United States has also increased drastically since abortion was legalized in 1973.
Blessed Mother Teresa said that “Saying that there are too many children is like saying that there are too many flowers.” What brings greater joy and innocence to the world than a sweet little baby or toddler?
® Conclusion
What the pro-life movement needs now is prayer and new people. We can expand the size and power of the pro-life movement by bringing new people into it. Everyone listening to this talk knows two or three people who are sympathetic to the plight of the unborn, but are not involved. This is usually because they have one or two problems with our philosophy or with the pro-life movement as portrayed by the corrupt mainstream media. Such uninvolved people might think that the pro-life movement is unsympathetic towards rape and incest victims; or that there are too many people in the world; or, since most people support abortion, it must be all right.
If you learn the topic and gently persuade these uninvolved people that their beliefs about the pro-life movement are incorrect, you have a much greater chance of bringing them into activism, whether it is street activities or crisis pregnancy center work.
If you would like a complete course on self-instruction on how to debunk the forty most common pro-abortion slogans, including the ten discussed today, please e-mail Brian Clowes at bclowes@hli.org.
Brian Clowes
Human Life International
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