Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Why can't Lawrence Finer and the Guttmacher Institute tell the truth about their own research?

Another day and another Guttmacher Institute study which leads them to exact same talking points we hear over and over and over and over again. Somehow a study which shows a higher percentage of women having abortions are poor should inform us that poor women are having abortions because they have less access to contraception (even though previous Guttmacher Institute research shows other leading reasons why women have unplanned pregnancies) and abortion restrictions effect poor women's access to abortion (Wait? Didn't the research show poor women were having more abortions?)

The Guttmacher Institute's Lawrence Finer also drops this blatant lie:
"Women who are deciding to have an abortion are women who have unintended pregnancies, and limited access to contraception is one of the key drivers of unintended pregnancies," said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute and author of the 2006 report. "Most Americans want to control how many kids they have and when they have them. We should [ease] access to contraception when possible to reduce the substantial proportion of unintended pregnancies."
Limited access is not one of the key drivers of unintended pregnancies and the reason I know this is because Guttmacher Institute research shows it isn't. Much higher numbers of unplanned pregnancies occurred because

1.) Contraceptives were used inconsistently
2.) Women thought they were unlikely to get pregnant
3.) Women had concerns about contraceptive methods
4.) They had unexpected sex

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