I read the folllowing in comments responding to Professor Stassen’s rebuttal of the National Right to Life Committee’s rebuttal of his intial article. I find THEIR “rebuttal” to be beside a mjor point to the FACTS of this study: that there HAS BEEN an increase under the Bush administration. This, for me, is sobering evidence for the “Right-to-Lifers” who extoll the virtues of their “anti-abortion” candidates who, as this study shows, have nothing but a slow, negative effect on what they are attempting to influence. Their political efforts result in a net-loss of the statistics they aim to better. Read thier rebuttal (from which I quote below, and see the post where Stassen’s reply to their initial rebuttal is posted– and there is a link to the original article by Stassen)

Between Two Worlds: Prof. Stassen Responds

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review:

For example, he does not deal with NRLC’s point that abortion rates and unemployment rates don’t appear to correlate with each other among states. Nor does Stassen attempt to deal with other factors that might have affected the data. Stassen also leans too much on his own family’s experience, in a way that attempts to guilt-trip people out of disagreeing with him.

I don’t really rely on the “other factors”. I tend to want to lay out the statistics on their own merit, and ask “So what are the actual “real-life” effects of this “political movement” that purports to be such a morally important stance, so much so that it seems to be the prime factor in their determining the “moral scorecard” of the candidate. These figures cast a very practical doubt upon this. Stassen sites the study becuase the abortion issue itself depends largely upon OTHER factors aside from the legality of certain procedures. The Bush administration hhas been abysmal in its response to nearly every legitimate social cause. If his “results” are not only NOT improving the situation, but also “turning the trend that was dropping around so that it now begins to increase once again, then the actual merits of their “moral” argument are supsect on practical grounds. If it’s really the actual instance of abortions that they are concerned about, then these statistics should give them great pause, that is, if they are interested in actually SOLVING the problem. My take is that a very small portion of these “morally outraged” about abortions actually will be moved at all by these figures (aside from the fact that most of them will simply discount the legitimacy of the study anyway, and do so becuase they’ve DECIDED PRIOR TO any results that nothng will dissuade them from assuming the rigtheousness of their candidates, based on simply rhetoric.

Bush says “YOu know my record, and I run on my record”. The first part is doubtful — most do NOT know his actual record—– the second is true in that he is running on the only record he actually has: his mouth. His actual MO is something completely foreign to his claims on the stump.