Robin....
Just wanted you to know that I am still in the process of researching
to what degree these "non estrogen" based pills are being dispensed
and how widely used they are.
However....you will be happy to know that in my process of pre-
marital counseling I have alerted two couples of these "RU 486 type"
of pills and steered them away from them.
I have also made it clear to students in my college classes that a
truly pro-life stance should reject this form of birth control.
Thanks for alerting me to this change that took place in the method
of prescribing.
-- Anonymous, January 24, 2002
More:
BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #020122 - 01/22/2002
Never Again: Abortion and a World that Never Was
"Never again!" abortion advocates intone. "Never
again will women be forced to go to back-alley
butchers and have abortions performed with coat
hangers. Keep abortion legal and safe."
But that argument has one major flaw. "Never again"
never was! Most of the scenario of what allegedly
happened before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade
decision is fiction!
Pro-choice rhetoric claims that before Roe nearly a
million women obtained illegal abortions each year,
"performed with rusty coat hangers in back alleys" --
resulting in five to ten thousand deaths.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics
reports that only thirty-nine women died from illegal
abortions in the year before Roe v. Wade. You need to
go back to 1942 to find one thousand deaths, but
remember, that's before antibiotics were available.
Government data reveals that the reduction in deaths
from abortion didn't result from making the procedure
legal, but from antibiotics.
Then where do the abortion activists get "five to ten
thousand deaths a year"? One source answers, "The
claims . . . are based on inaccurately calculated
extrapolations from flawed and erroneous data of the
1920s and 1930s." That is, they took inaccurate death
rates before penicillin and multiplied them by the
population growth after penicillin. It never added
up.
And as co-founder of the National Abortion Rights
Action League, Dr. Bernard Nathanson now
acknowledges, math wasn't the primary reason for the
inflated numbers. Nathanson, now a leader in the pro-
life movement, says, "I confess that I knew the
figures were totally false . . . But in the
'morality' of the revolution, it was a useful figure,
widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct
it with honest statistics? The overwhelming concern
was to get the laws eliminated, and anything . . .
which had to be done was permissible."
What about the claim that nearly a million illegal
abortions were performed annually? Dr. Frank
Beckwith, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Culture
and Law at Trinity Graduate School answers, "There is
no reliable statistical support for this claim." One
sophisticated study estimated that the number of
abortions before legalization averaged about one
hundred thousand per year. That's a far cry from
"nearly a million."
And how many of those were performed by "back-alley
butchers, with rusty coat hangers"? As far back as
1960, Dr. Mary Calderone of Planned Parenthood
acknowledged that eighty-four to eighty-seven percent
of all illegal abortions were performed by licensed
physicians. Dr. Beckwith comments, "It seems that the
vast majority of the alleged 'back-alley butchers'
eventually became the 'reproductive health providers'
of our present day."
As the website "roevwade.org" aptly says, "'Never
again' never was." And as Dr. Beckwith contends, " .
. . it would go beyond the duty of kindness to call
such claims an exaggeration . . . the pro-choice
movement was simply lying."
"Pro-choice" ideologues, and the moneyed interests
behind the abortion industry, continue to circulate
unsubstantiated claims. It's time to point out "Never
again" never was -- and it's time to rethink our
national position in the light of real facts.
For further reading:
"The Myth of Mass Back-Alley Abortion Deaths"
"More on Illegal Abortion Deaths"
"Light in Darkness: Womb with a View"
-- Anonymous, January 22, 2002
Robin -- I'm not sure what percentage of the pills are abortive in
nature, but I do know that many are, and yes, we should preach
against the use of these types of pills, as well as the IUD devices
that do the very same thing. They are just a form of very early
abortion, and many Christian women use these items, maybe without
even knowing what they are doing.
ON A SIDE NOTE -- I returned late last night from Washington DC and
the March For Life. I took my oldest son (Daniel, 9 years) with me.
Of the tens of 1,000's of people marching, I would venture to guess
that well over 90% were Roman Catholic, with some other Orthodox
religions, and then the "evangelicls" for lack of a better term. It
can safely be said that if it weren't for the RC's, there would not
be a viable Right to Life movement in America today.
BUT -- the gentleman who opened the rally at the Washington Monument
with prayer was a prof from Lincoln Christian College/Seminary ...
though I did not catch his name.
-- Anonymous, January 23, 2002