Planned Parenthood is no stranger to lies and deception. But when its lies are so egregious that even the left-leaning Washington Post...
Planned Parenthood is no stranger to lies and deception.
But when its lies are so egregious that even the left-leaning Washington Post has to call out the organization, you know Planned Parenthood has given up any pretense of being credible.
First, let me tell you the lie.
Leana Wen, the president of Planned Parenthood, has repeatedly claimed that “thousands of women died ever year” prior to Roe v. Wade because of botched abortions.
The Washington Post, a bastion of left-leaning ideology and no champion of the pro-life cause, took the time to fact-check Wen’s claims.
The verdict result: four Pinocchios. That is The Post’s highest rating for a dishonest statement.
In determining that Wen’s claims were “whoppers” of lies, the fact-checking article pointed to a couple of key points.
First, collecting data from that time period is difficult. Paper upon paper cited numbers based on theories and speculation. Little or no hard data backed up the claims that Wen, and other anti-life advocates, have been parroting.
The Post revealed that Wen’s assertions were derived from “crude estimates,” lack of citations, lack of explanations, “fuzzy” numbers, and disregard for “rigorous calculations.” Next, The Post noted that by 1959 (14 years before Roe), a leading researcher had already declared that “abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure.” (Obviously, that’s not true for the baby.)
The conclusion of The Post’s assessment of Wen’s repeated assertions is so damning that I would be doing a disservice to keep you from reading its glorious entirety:
“Wen is a doctor, and the ACOG is made up of doctors. They should know better than to peddle statistics based on data that predates the advent of antibiotics. Even given the fuzzy nature of the data and estimates, there is no evidence that in the years immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s decision, thousands of women died every year in the United States from illegal abortions.
“Wen’s repeated use of this number reminds us of the shoddy data used by human trafficking opponents. Unsafe abortion is certainly a serious issue, especially in countries with inadequate medical facilities. But advocates hurt their cause when they use figures that do not withstand scrutiny. These numbers were debunked in 1969 — 50 years ago — by a statistician celebrated by Planned Parenthood. There’s no reason to use them today.”
That’s some red-hot fire right there. It isn’t Planned Parenthood’s first lie and it certainly won’t be the last.
In the future, the good people of the pro-life movement can’t leave it up to The Washington Post to do their bidding. We must be vigilant. We must be truthful.
And we must never become complacent about death or the people who peddle its lies.
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