Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the abortion industry never rests.
In a report from Guttmacher this summer, abortion advocates explained that access to safe abortion is an essential reproductive healthcare service for adolescents and suggested lowering regulations on abortion as an appropriate response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Guttmacher Institute is a “sexual and reproductive health and rights” research organization originally associated with Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The logic in the Guttmacher report, though never spelled out, seems to be that since it is harder to access abortion “care” and other reproductive health care now, “barriers” have to go away so ease of access balances out to pre-pandemic accessibility.
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The authors make many assumptions in providing the estimates for negative outcomes in sexual and reproductive healthcare services due to the pandemic, the validity of which should rightly be questioned and tested.
Additionally, the estimates in this report were made using estimates from several other reports; unfortunately, this makes the numbers in the Guttmacher report not much more than ballpark figures based on a lot of assumptions.
For example, the report estimates that due to the pandemic imposing accessibility restrictions, a 23% shift from “safe” to “unsafe” abortion would result in 491,000 additional unsafe abortions in over 132 low- and middle-income countries for 15-19 year-olds. They do not specify the time period over which this shift would happen.
Their 23% estimated shift was based on information in a report in The Lancet:
“For the reduction in access to safe abortion services, we used the childbirth care coverage reduction... assuming a similar lack of access to facilities and providers for people seeking safe abortions.” [emphasis added]
Even without knowing how abortions are provided in each of the 132 countries included in the estimate, it is quite the jump in logic to assume the overlap between childbirth care coverage facilities/providers and abortion facilities/providers is so close as to be exchangeable for any meaningful statistical purposes.
Upon what have they based this assumption? They give no reasoning.
To make matters even worse, The Lancet's report admits, “Our estimates are based on tentative assumptions…”
The vague figure for “unsafe” abortions therefore has very little weight; the other outcomes they look at, like estimated increased number of stillbirths, maternal deaths, and decrease in contraceptive usage, are also just ballpark figures and have no timeframe given over which these outcomes would be made apparent.
To be clear, the pro-life and pregnancy help movements do not want any children or women to die because they do not have access to healthcare. However, for the pro-choice authors to place abortion access on the same playing field as prenatal and postnatal care for children is ridiculous.
Tweet This: To place abortion access on the same playing field as prenatal and postnatal care for children is ridiculous.
Some of the authors’ other ideas include governments working to:
“Repeal restrictive policies such as parental consent requirements, which pose an even greater burden during the pandemic;”
“making contraceptives available without a prescription;” and
“Leverage young people’s use of digital platforms to promote telehealth options that make care available to patients in their own homes.”
How does parental consent get more burdensome in a pandemic?
They never explain.
Many types of contraceptives and family planning techniques are readily available without a prescription, but they do not consider non-prescription methods to be “modern” and they only estimate what the outcome of a decline in “modern” contraception might look like. And telehealth chemical abortions are certainly far from being considered any safer for pregnant women than in-clinic chemical abortions — and even in-clinic or -hospital chemical abortions are not as safe as touted by abortion advocates.
We can reasonably infer that if any of the authors’ proposals are put in place by governments during the pandemic, the abortion industry will fight to keep them in place afterward because they don’t want these “barriers” to care to only be down during the pandemic; they want them down all the time.
For example, other publications Guttmacher has put out shows the abortion advocacy group already advocates for no parental consent requirements for minors in their global articles about abortion. They are not peddling anything new by advocating for fewer regulations on abortion access for minors; they are merely shamelessly using a global concern to try to achieve goals they’ve always wanted but which may have been too hard to achieve in other circumstances.
Another detail to note is the report this summer was funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization known for pushing abortion and eugenics policies, especially in developing and third-world countries.
We’ve come a long way from “safe, legal, and rare”; probably because “rare” implies abortion should not be done as routine or regular care. But if, as they say, abortion is reproductive health care and a woman’s right, it would then follow that restrictions should not be placed on how often that right is exercised. Thus the new mantra by abortion advocates seems to be “easy access no matter what.”
Health and safety concerns and cultural views on sex and family go out the window when the abortion industry talks about abortion and ease of procuring an abortion is highlighted as a more prominent concern. Oh sure, they will couple the idea of easy access to “safe” abortion. But they are not fooling people.
Abortion is not health care. Abortion is not reproductive care. Abortion is not care, period. Abortion is not safe because it kills a human organism and can have long-term mental and physical effects on the woman who has the abortion. It is many times done under coercion or pressure and without informed consent.
Tweet This: Abortion is not health care. Abortion is not reproductive care. Abortion is not care, period.
That killing an innocent human is pushed as a right for all women, including minors, with little regulation to ensure safety and informed consent, is something the abortion industry sees as perfectly ok.
Instead of fighting for actual health care for adolescents, the abortion industry pushes back against pregnancy help organizations like Heartbeat International which seek to truly help women facing unplanned or difficult pregnancies — all without pushing them to make a decision which helps their bottom line.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Hep News.
