National Review Online: Mainstream Media Continues to Distort on Abortion

From Michael J. New, writing in National Review Online:

Abortion Distortion
Will the media correct the record?

By Michael J. New

Abortion, as we all know, is one of the most scrutinized issues in American politics. The mainstream media is always eager to detail the positions of various candidates, document platform fights, and analyze the views of prospective Supreme Court nominees. However, despite this, the media have only granted scant coverage to the consistent decline in the abortion rate since the early 1990s. Even worse, the only occasions when the media has used, or in some cases misused, these numbers is to advance liberal political objectives.

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Abortion trends did suddenly become a hot topic during the 2004 presidential election. This was partly because several commentators were using the Clinton-era decline to urge pro-life voters to support candidates who supported abortion rights. A New York Times op-ed by Mark Roche — the dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame — made this exact point. Roche contrasted the slight increase in abortions that occurred under the Reagan administration with the decline during Bill Clinton’s presidency and argued that the interests of abortion opponents might be better served by electing a President who supported legalized abortion.

Perhaps even more notoriously, ethicist Glen Stassen wrote a widely circulated article for Sojourners, arguing that abortions had actually increased after President Bush’s inauguration. This article was reprinted by a number of major newspapers around the country including the Charlotte Observer, the Miami Herald, the Houston Chronicle, and the Hartford Courant. Furthermore, Stassen’s research was cited in articles that appeared in the New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

There were a number of problems with Stassen’s analysis, including the fact he analyzed data from a small sampling of states. Furthermore, some states attributed their increases to more rigorous reporting standards. Nevertheless, Strassens's claims have stuck and become some of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean's favorite stats.

However, in May the Alan Guttmacher Institute (no pro-life outfit) released a comprehensive survey which found that abortions had actually decreased in both 2001 and 2002. Considering the attention that Stassen’s faulty analysis received in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere, one would hope that media organizations would be interested in correcting this misinformation that Stassen and others disseminated during the 2004 election.

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My Comments:
Will the MSM correct the record and report that the number of abortions have actually declined since President Bush entered the White House?

Yeah, riiiiiight.