Clearly, the Guttmacher Institute, formerly a “special affiliate” for Planned Parenthood and now the highbrow apologist for the Abortion Industry, does not fear crying wolf. Once again (is there a pattern here?) we learn that as bad as 2020 was for pro-abortionists, 2021 is worse.

 

For example, in April, the headline to Guttmacher’s update read, “2021 Is on Track to Become the Most Devastating Antiabortion State Legislative Session in Decades.”

 

If April’s ticker tape was the legislative equivalent of the 1929 stock market crash, could the news be more awful in July? Of course. 

 

Here’s the headline for Elizabeth Nash’s latest lamentation released today: “ State Policy Trends at Midyear 2021: Already the Worst Legislative Year Ever for U.S. Abortion Rights.”

 

Can you even imagine October’s report?!

 

Here are five bullet points. Remember, Guttmacher’s numbers never match up with ours. They are always larger because they break out any given law’s components and add them up. So one law counts as four “abortion restrictions.” It’s the same technique, only in reverse, that allows Planned Parenthood to pretend that abortion is “only 3% of its services.” 

 

 

#2. “The 90 abortion restrictions enacted this year already surpass the count from 2011, previously the worst year on record, when 89 restrictions were enacted. In total, state legislatures have enacted 1,320 restrictions in the 48 years since Roe was decided, including 573 restrictions enacted since 2011. This year, 90% of the enacted restrictions were adopted in states already considered to be hostile toward abortion rights.”

 

Pro-life states continue to erect walls against encroachments by the Abortion Industry, including amendments to state constitutions, and passing new laws and measures that put teeth in existing legislation.

 

#3. “The 2021 abortion restrictions amplify the harm of earlier ones: Each additional restriction increases patients’ logistic, financial and legal barriers to care, especially in regions where entire clusters of states are hostile to abortion.” I have called this the Multiplier Effect.

 

I like the idea of “entire clusters” of pro-life states. Our goal is to expand existing clusters and create new ones.

 

#4. There’s the dreaded Mississippi law that bans abortions—saves babies-after the 15^th week. “The Mississippi ban is unconstitutional according to almost five decades of existing Supreme Court rulings, which prohibit a state from banning abortion before viability (generally at 24 to 26 weeks of pregnancy). Although lower courts struck down the ban, this fall the Supreme Court will consider whether a previability abortion ban is constitutional.”

 

First of all, the age of viability is earlier than 24-26 weeks. Second, even the most ardent pro-abortionists understand that the point of “viability” is totally arbitrary and subject to advances in perinatal care. Third, the Supreme Court is always being challenged to rethink its wholly irrational abortion jurisprudence. And

 

#5. What Guttmacher labels “Proactive Efforts,” for example, “Abortion protections. Although abortion restrictions took center stage in 2021, policies that protect and expand abortion rights and access have been enacted in a handful of states.” 

 

These are not tinkering around the margins. In states like New York and Vermont, they have thrown all caution to the wind, legalizing abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and removing requirements, limited as they may have been, to treat abortion survivors.

 

But pro-lifers never give up and never give in. We will continue to fight pro-abortionists at every step, seeking to protect what we have and roll back anti-life advances.

 

Meanwhile, I just can’t wait for Guttmacher’s October Update.