Dave's response to the Journal Gazette abortion editorial

Bishop Rhoades responded in the Journal Gazette to a recent editorial about abortion. http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110204/EDIT05/302049994/1021/EDIT

Dave responded to the same editorial below :

Dear Editor,

Your January 26 editorial, “A back-alley reminder,” made the common assertion, “[w]hen safe, legal abortions are no longer available, the horrific back-alley abortions that preceded Roe v. Wade will return.” The editorial staff appears to have fallen prey to and, perhaps unintentionally, perpetuates the lies of the early abortion movement, specifically the myths regarding back-alley abortions.

The co-founder of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, now freely confesses that his group’s members lied to gain media attention. “We simply fabricated the results of fictional polls” he stated. “We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60 percent of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion…We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000.”

Dr. Nathanson has acknowledged that leaders of the early movement grossly exaggerated claims about women dying in back-alley abortions, that the vast majority of abortions performed prior to 1973 were not done with coat hangers in back alleys, as abortion activists frequently insist. Rather, they were done by unscrupulous doctors who couldn’t make a legitimate living. Nevertheless, NARAL's lies continued. He explained,

"Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. [Prior to Roe v. Wade] the number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000. These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. "

The abortion debate has suffered with enough hyperbole. We must insist that both sides back up emotionally charged statements with facts. Future generations deserve no less.

Sources:

Confession of Bernard Nathanson, MD - http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html
Wikipedia - Bernard Nathanson - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Nathanson
NARAL & Dr. Bernard Nathanson - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-FpJMq_gAY

Respectfully submitted,

David A. MacDonald