In his Friday column ("Failing Forward"), published in Saturday's print edition, the New York Times's Charles Blow really blew it in attempting to relay an abortion-related statistic from the abortion-supportive Alan Guttmacher Institute. Blow wrote (shown here) that "the unintended pregnancy rate has jumped 50 percent since 1994."
The Times has since corrected the column to reflect what the Guttmacher Institute reported, which is that (italics are mine) "the unintended pregnancy rate among poor women has jumped 50 percent since 1994." LiveAction.org's Lisa Graas and Jennie Stone both noted Blow's blunder earlier today. Each also strongly and eloquently criticized Blow for his profoundly antilife attitudes. Additionally, the Times columnist used a "from 2000 to 2009" statistic about child poverty to mask the fact that most of the rise in that statistic occurred during the final year of that time period, i.e., the first year of the presidency of you-know-who.
Ms. Graas's key contentions about Blow echo our President's attitude towards the idea of bringing unwanted pregnancies to term:
Blow slams people of faith for saying that if you get pregnant you should not abort and classifies children as “punishment" ("Even if you follow a primitive religious concept of punishment for sex [...]").
Blow makes clear a second time a contention that a child is “punishment” for sex and that people of faith desire this “punishment” ("This is what we’re saying: actions have consequences. If you didn’t want a child, you shouldn’t have had sex. You must be punished by becoming a parent even if you know that you are not willing or able to be one").
Blow refuses to say the word “abortion” while advocating for the acceptance of child killing ("We also have to preserve women’s birth options should they become pregnant, including the option not to give birth").
Blow claims unintended pregnancies are happening because of stigma or judgment about sex ("We have to remove the stigma and judgment around sex").
Ms. Stone, in asserting that Blow must believe that "having your life violently taken before birth is preferable to living a potentially difficult life" observes the pro-choice hypocrisy (bold is mine; internal link is in original):
(Blow's column) epitomizes the abortion-first mentality that the so-called pro-choice movement has today. If unintended pregnancy rates rise, the automatic solution advocated by the pro-choice lobby is to make sure the abortion rate rises, too. These restrictions include new laws like sonogram laws and parental notification laws, which are fundamental to a “pro-informed consent” and “pro-family” ideals. Funny, Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion chain in America who reported last year that 98% of their pregnancy “services” were abortion) claims to be all gung-ho about informed consent and a “pro-family” attitude, but ardently fights against the very laws that would provide women with both!
I fail to see how having your small and delicate body torn limb from limb, sucked into a jar, and thrown away as “medical waste” like a piece of garbage is preferable to living a life of potential difficulty and hardship. One need not be a religious advocate to understand that killing an innocent human being is wrong. How ironic it is that pro-choicers advocate that torturing an unborn child to death is an act of mercy.
Blow's statistical chicanery got an assist from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which recently reported the following:
... over the last decade there has been a significant decline in economic well-being for low income children and families. The official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, essentially returning to the same level as the early 1990s. This increase means that 2.4 million more children are living below the federal poverty line.
Readers will be shocked (no, not really) to learn that 58% of the increase cited occurred the final year of the period covered in the foundation's press release, but that the foundation "somehow" didn't see fit to report this one-year result (interactive foundation data source):
Perhaps (no, almost definitely), this press release oversight occurred because the data decay "just so happened" to occur during the recession lengthened by the Obama administration's non-stimulative stimulus followed by the early stages of what Investors Business Daily accurately described on Friday as "The Endless Economic Recovery."
Expressed another way, the number of children in poverty in the U.S. increased by more during the first year of the Obama administration than it did during the entire eight years of the eeeeevil Bush administration. During the final six years of the Bush administration, the child poverty rate as a percentage of the population basically held steady. In the first year of the Obama administration, it jumped by two points. Anyone want to take bets that it will go down when 2010's information is released?
Readers will be amazed (no, not really) that CNN abused the foundation's stats by asserting that "The worst recession since the Great Depression saw 2.4 million more children fall below the poverty line." No, that was the entire decade's change, as seen above.
Getting back to the original topic, congrats to LiveAction for showing how the Times's Blow really blew it, and for pointing out the ugliness of his supposedly "compassionate" stances.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
