Eric linked to an article by Glen Stassen, a seminary ethics professor I had while at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1978-81. He points out what I figured would happen under the Bush administration. All Talk, no walk. The Bush administration’s negli9gence of real life issues and determiniation to do nothing but work for the interests of their constituents (the corporations and the Christian Right). They satisfy the Christian Right becuase they fit the mold: all talk and piety and no actual copntact with real socail issues, and don’t want to dirty their hands.
Let’s see some fruits from this anti-abortion talk (I would like to see the abortion rate go down too….and it WAS, that is , until MR. All Talk and “bring it on” came into office) or just shut up about it, OK?
Eric’s Tasty Morsels of Thought – Abortion on the rise under George W. Bush.
Stassen: I look at the fruits of political policies more than words. I analyzed the data on abortion during the George W. Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information — federal reports go only to 2000, and many states do not report — but I found enough data to identify trends. My findings are counterintuitive and disturbing.
Abortion was decreasing. In the decade before George W. Bush became president, the number of abortions in the United States fell from 1,610,000 to 1,330,000. That is a decline of 17.4% over the decade of the 1990s, an average decrease of 1.7% per year. (The data come from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which gets them from the Guttmacher Institute.)
Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.
Three states have posted several years of recent statistics through 2003: Kentucky, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Here’s what happened to their abortion rates: Kentucky’s increased by 3.2% from 2000 to 2003. Michigan’s increased by 11.3% from 2000 to 2003. Pennsylvania’s increased by 1.9% from 1999 to 2002.
What does this tell us? Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative. Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without healthcare, health insurance, jobs, childcare, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need a president who will do something about jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.
(I read about these forecasts and data gathering in the “Pro-Life” issue of Sojourners in this article)
–from Prism e-newsletter and from Sojourners full Stassen article email
I just stumbled across this (really old) post via google. It turns out Stassen’s analysis had major statistical flaws. The Guttmacher Institute (affiliated with Planned Parenthood) released a report stating that the abortion rate has actually dropped during the Bush Administration. Read more here: http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2008/01/17/index.html
Yep, that Sojo “No Place to Stand” article was great. Highly recommended to anybody who hasn’t read it. I’m glad we have more statistics now about the reality of Bush and his so-called “pro-life” stance.