Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Planned Parenthood's Numbers-Massage

From a source meeting the full approval of Owen, no less...

Recently, the Guttmacher Institute (a research wing of Planned Parenthood), released a study with some stats I thought sounded fishy (read the summary report here) Of course the media just spit the press release out as fact.

48% of all abortions worldwide were unsafe
more than 97% of all unsafe abortions were in developing countries
There were 31 abortions for every 100 livebirths worldwide in 2003


Asked to comment, a Ph.D. Texas A&M stats guy offered the following:

...here is what I see (note that I defer to their definitions):

-If an abortion takes place in a polity where induced abortion is illegal (or severely restricted), it is deemed as unsafe, even if done so by trained providers.

-The researchers "corrected" some data for under-reporting. The correction inflation was usually about 140%. The US correction factor was 105%; Bangladesh was 300%. Therefore, for countries where abortions are illegal, the total number of abortions was estimated, then inflated, and then all of these were considered unsafe.

Lots more at the link.

No wonder Planned Parenthood/Milwaukee likes Dan Maguire so much. Birds of a feather...

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