Wednesday, May 20, 2009

More bad research from Glen Stassen on abortion

Mark Tooley completely destroys Glen Stassen's latest foray into attempting to attack President Bush on abortion.

To defend his vote for John Kerry in 2004, Stassen did some incredibly sloppy research and then claimed abortions rose under President Bush in 2001 based on this research. His editorial and statistics were then thoroughly debunked by a variety of organizations and Stassen eventually admitted he was wrong when the Alan Guttmacher Institute released a report saying abortions decreased in 2001.

Yet nearly every bigwig Democratic politician echoed his claims even after he admitted he was wrong. After making so many obvious mistakes, Stassen appears to have not learned a single lesson from the 2004 debacle and now even has the gall to act like the only reason people "attacked (his) data" was he "predicted those cutbacks would increase abortions in 2002."

He's also claiming his prediction about 2002 (his prediction was abortions would go up by 52,000) was right because according to the CDC (whose statistics don't include a few states) the number of reported abortions increased. What Stassen doesn't tell you is the number of abortion reported to the CDC in 2002 didn't increase by anywhere near Stassen's estimate of 52,000 - they increased by 637. The CDC also reports that reported abortions decreased in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Stassen also never notes that according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, U.S. abortions decreased in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

For a professor of Christian Ethics at a rather esteemed place like Fuller Theological Seminary, Stassen's writings on abortion are filled with deception and lack anything resembling Christian ethics. It is extremely unfortunate when someone in Stassen's position intentionally decides to shade the truth in order to justify himself and politicians who favor legal abortion.

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