Beginning in 1968, while campaigning to repeal
all state abortion laws, a prominent abortionist
named Bernard Nathanson fabricated statistics
and made up false stories to advance his cause.
Beginning in 1968, while campaigning to repeal all state abortion laws, a prominent abortionist named Bernard Nathanson fabricated statistics and made up false stories to advance his cause. His aim was to frame the abortion debate to make it seem like compassion positively demanded legalization.
Nathanson and his team at the National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws (it lives on today as NARAL) made up the statistic that there were 1 million illegal abortions in the United States annually. Nathanson knew this was more than 10 times the real figure, but he wanted to make the situation seem dire.
He also created, from whole cloth, a claim you still hear today — that 10,000 women were dying in the U.S. from illegal, back-alley abortions every year before Roe. Nathanson was well aware that the true figure was 200 to 250. He inflated this terrible statistic by a factor of 40 or 50 to win sympathy.
Nathanson, who died in 2011, later discussed how, as an abortion campaigner, he always downplayed and obscured any scientific evidence pointing to the humanity of the fetus in the womb.
We know all about Nathanson’s lies and distortions because he confessed them. After a long career as an abortionist, during which he was personally responsible for 75,000 abortions, he experienced a total conversion, rejected abortion, and revealed the truth about what by that time had grown into a $500 million national abortion industry.
After the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, which at last ended the pretense that there is a constitutional right to abortion, debate over the issue will resume in a way foreclosed since 1973. So, it is worth remembering that deception, fabrication, and wild claims are likely to be plentiful from those making the case against abortion limits.
It was therefore familiar this week when President Joe Biden repeated an unverified story about a 10-year-old girl supposedly denied an abortion in Ohio, where the procedure is banned after six weeks of pregnancy.
“It was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life,” Biden said.
The story had originated a week earlier in the Indianapolis Star, with a local abortionist as its only source. That source was Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis abortionist who was given responsibility for this Ohio girl’s care. She has since been slapped with a privacy violation for trying to turn this little girl's sad story into a political coup.
Considering Dr. Bernard's well-known history as a pro-abortion activist, this story should not have been reported without confirmation. Much of the initial reporting still seems to be wrong.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has pointed out that his state's abortion law contains exceptions for the "life of the mother" and "irreversible impairment of a major bodily function," which would have covered such a case as the one Biden described. So, contrary to the original story, this girl was evidently not taken to Indiana because Ohio law bans such a procedure.
Abortion takes a human life, and it can also enable violence against women and girls, as the Ohio case suggests. The right to abortion conferred wrongly in the Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years ago created an environment in which rape, including child rape, can be concealed by killing any resulting baby. Women can be pressured by abusive partners hell-bent on making abortion the only real “choice” to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood or decades of child-support payments. Dobbs has set off a panic because some people are angry that this will not be as easily available.
When they go to a sympathetic media with false facts and narratives, be skeptical.
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