LifeNews.com declares "Texas Has Just 17 Abortions in 2023" - really? The anatomy of a lie
If you support a law making something a crime — and you are a liar — you will be damn sure to boast that the law has reduced that crime, even if you have to fudge the truth — or worse, just make things up. So it is no surprise that LifeNews.com, a prominent forced-birth propaganda site, claims the Texas abortion ban has been wildly successful.
In a report titled “Texas Has Just 17 Abortions in 2023, Abortion Ban Saves Tens of Thousands of Babies” the anti-civil rights group celebrates the results of Texas's official misogyny. But are they reporting accurately? Of course not. So what do they say? Let us look beyond the headline and go to the first two paragraphs of the piece.
The Texas abortion ban is working and a new report from the Texas health department shows just 17 abortions so far in 2023 as the state’s pro-life law has saved tens of thousands of babies from abortions.
Texas Health and Human Services Commission recorded only 17 legal abortions in the first four months of 2023, according to a new report by the agency. All the abortions that took place were needed to save the life of the mother or because of medical emergencies.
The key word is “legal.” And although the piece does not say it, the group only counts in-state legal abortions. LifeNews' own link makes clear that “Out of state procedures for Texas residents. These data will be included in a final version of this report when the out-of-state data are complete.” I do not know what that number will be, except it will be significantly greater than 17.
Within the state, there have been 1,000s of abortions, either medical, self-induced, or “back alley.” We will never know the exact number. However, a study by the Guttmacher Institute estimated that in 1967, when abortion was largely illegal in the United States, there were 829,000 off-the-books abortions.
In Texas alone, there are 6.7 million women aged 15-45 — i.e. women of childbearing age. Nobody with any common sense can seriously believe that just 17 terminated a pregnancy — and only because of medical reasons. Texas records 15,000 rapes a year (the real number is higher) ranking the state #16 in the frequency of that crime.
As poorly as LifeNews started, they got worse.
One of the most common defenses of late-term abortion is the claim that in some cases, abortion is medically necessary. Lately, Americans have been hearing this claim in defense of a law in New York that allows abortions through all nine months of pregnancy. But that claim is based on faulty assumptions about the options available to women who face life-threatening pregnancy complications. The truth, known to thousands of OB-GYNs worldwide, is that there is no situation in which an abortion is medically necessary.
(Bolding mine)
It makes you want to scream. God forbid a pregnant woman, fatally compromised by a pregnancy gone tragically wrong, reads this and refuses the treatment she needs because she thinks there is an alternative. Who are these “thousands of OB-GYNs worldwide?” Are there any reputable medical groups or journals that make this claim?
LifeNews answers those questions with a reply even a cursory analysis renders ridiculous.
Over a thousand OB-GYNs and maternal healthcare experts joined together to affirm this reality in the Dublin Declaration, which states: “As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynecology, we affirm that direct abortion – the purposeful destruction of the unborn child — is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.
Already, “thousands of OB-GYNs” have become “over 1000 OB/GYNs and maternal health care experts.” If you look at this Dublin Declaration, the number is “over 1,013.” Of those only 244 are OB-GYNs. The rest are “medical professionals” (526), “midwives and nurses” (89), “neonatologists and pediatricians” (57), and “medical students” (21)
Which, added up, only comes to 937 (and remember, that is worldwide). It is deceptive, dishonest, and sloppy. They go on to offer breathtaking sophistry.
We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child. We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.
I do not know what that means. My best guess is that it is something like “Ms. Smith, the operation went fabulously well. And the other good news is that, although your baby is dead, it wasn’t an abortion.”
You only have to lie to support your position when your position sucks. I thought it would be impossible to be more deplorable than the anti-choice zealots claiming abortion is regularly performed up to and post-birth — ignoring that less than 1% of abortions occur after 20 weeks, and killing a baby after birth is illegal in every state — but saying that abortion is never medically necessary tops that lie.