Beware the "fact-checkers" on abortion, especially when it's at pro-abortion National Public Radio. On Friday morning, NPR.org posted an article titled "7 persistent claims about abortion, fact-checked." But these "persistent claims" didn't come with an actual source, but you could tell the point was to "own the pro-lifers."
The worst "factual" claim utterly left out the unborn half of the human equation, the one whose life is unmercifully destroyed.
Claim: Abortion is dangerous.
Pregnancy and childbirth are far more dangerous than getting an abortion, according to data from the CDC.
The annual number of deaths related to legal induced abortion has fluctuated from year to year since 1973, according to the CDC.
An analysis of data from 2013 to 2018 showed the national case-fatality rate for legal induced abortion was 0.41 deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions, lower than in the previous five years.
Then there's the apparently mandatory gender-identity proclamation. Did anyone actually make this "claim"?
Claim: The only people getting abortions are straight, cisgender women.
About 500 transgender or nonbinary people had abortions in 2017, according to a Guttmacher Institute survey.
....The Guttmacher Institute estimates in 2017, an estimated 462 to 530 transgender or nonbinary individuals in the U.S. had abortions. That same year, the CDC said, 609,095 total abortions were carried out in the country.
The Abortion Out Loud campaign has collected stories from thousands of people who have had an abortion. Included are stories from trans and nonbinary people who have had an abortion — such as Jae, who spoke their experience.
Then there's the late-term abortions.
Claim: People are getting abortions late in pregnancy.
Over 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester (by 13 weeks).
The claim that is apparently "corrected" here is actually true. Some people do get late-term abortions. Some doctors specialize in them.
This raises the obvious question: If the vast majority of abortions are in the first trimester, how does the 15-week limit of Mississippi constitute a horrific end to abortion?
They also attacked the claim that "People who are religious don’t get abortions." One would hope that religious people are less likely to get abortions. But it's a classic liberal-media game to attach "religious affiliation" to Americans who might not actually go to church. They may have been "raised" in a churchgoing family, but didn't really turn out to be religious.
They also complained about fetal-pain arguments -- as in "why can't be rip the baby apart if it can't feel it?" is a serious ethical question. The Charlotte Lozier Institute has a pro-life roundup on that. It includes the point that women trying to keep their baby will find that doctors and hospitals can treat the baby as a patient, not as a clump of cells.
