The New York Times cracks me up

In a recent article, the New York Times claims to have performed on a study on the number of abortions performed on minors in a variety of states before and after they passed parental involvement legislation. The six states were Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. They claim that parental involvement laws "do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for."

First, why is the study only limited to the states that passed their parental involvement laws from 1995-2004? Why not include other states which passed parental involvement legislation prior to 1995? The article notes:

"Previous research on the effects of parental notification laws has been slender and has produced contradictory conclusions. All were hampered by inconsistencies in the ways states gather and report data.

The Times analysis was limited by its focus on just six states, but it avoided the possible distortions of including states that gather data in inconsistent ways."

What the New York Times fails to mention is that the Arizona abortion statistics are inconsistent. In 2004 (the year after their parental consent law was passed) the state of Arizona implemented a new way of reporting abortions because their previous way ended in inconsistent statistics. In their 2004 abortion report, the Arizona Department of Health Services says (emphasis mine),

"In calendar year 2004, the Arizona Department of Health Services received 12,301 reports of abortions obtained by Arizona residents, 21.1 percent more than the 10,154 reported in 2003 (Figure 1-D1, Table 1D-1). It is unclear, whether this substantial increase represents a true increase in the number of abortions performed or, perhaps, the implementation of the new abortion reporting form in January 2004 may have contributed to the improved response rate from providers."

So the Times includes date from a state which admits in the report that its statistics might not be accurate and for some reason fails to pass that information on to its readers. Hmmmm..... An honest researcher would exclude Arizona's abortion statistics from their study. Would the results of the study been different if Arizona's possibly skewed statistics weren't included?

The article also includes the comments of abortion providers admitting that children are often coerced into abortion by their parents.

"I see far more parents trying to pressure their daughters to have one," said Jane Bovard, owner of the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo, N.D., a state where a minor needs consent from both parents. "As a parent myself, I can understand. But I say to parents, 'You force her to have this abortion, and I can tell you that within the next six months she's going to be pregnant again.' "

If you're truly "pro-choice" shouldn't your response have been, "Forcing a girl to have an abortion is wrong. I'm not going to perform an abortion on a girl who is being forced into it." Plus, how does Ms. Bovard know that a teen who is being coerced/forced into an abortion by their parents will be pregnant again? Is it because she's performed abortions on teens who were forced into an abortion and then they've come back 6 months later?

More on the heartless reaction of some pro-choice bloggers to this story from Emily and more about the statistics from Christina.