Abortion advocates came out with another study this week that claims women are certain of their decision when they choose to abort their babies.
The study comes from the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco, a research group with strong pro-abortion biases.
Back in 2010, Dr. Tracy Weitz, director of ANSIRH, admitted that she does not want abortions to be rare.
Weitz wrote: “‘rare’ suggests that abortion is happening more than it should, and that there are some conditions for which abortions should and should not occur. It separates good abortions from bad abortions.”
The new study, published in the journal “Contraception,” examined the attitudes of 500 women seeking abortions in Utah, according to Fox News. Researchers asked the women to rate 20 items to assess how informed and how certain they were about their decision to have an abortion. Three weeks later, the researchers followed up with the women in a phone call.
According to the research, most women were certain about their choice both before and after having the abortion.
“Levels of certainty about the decision to have an abortion were comparable to, and often higher than, levels of certainty found in other studies of men and women making other health care decisions like whether to have a mastectomy after a breast cancer diagnosis, undergo prenatal testing after infertility, or have reconstructive knee surgery,” lead author Lauren J. Ralph told Reuters.
Fox News reports more:
More than half of women strongly agreed with every item on the certainty scale, including, “I know which options are available to me” and “I expect to stick to my decision.” The one exception was the item: “this decision is easy for me to make.”
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The results of the decisional conflict scales, scored from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing higher conflict or uncertainty, showed the women overall to be very sure of their choice. Mean scores were 15.5/100 and 12.4/100.
According to the follow-up phone interviews, 267 women, or 89 percent of the group, did return to the clinic for an abortion. The 11 percent who were still pregnant at that point had scored higher on the uncertainty scale when surveyed at the clinic, with a mean uncertainty score of 28.5, compared to a mean of 13.5 among women who went through with an abortion.
“Our finding directly challenges the idea that decision-making on abortion is somehow exceptional and requires additional protection, such as state laws that mandate waiting periods or targeted counseling and whose stated purpose is to prevent women from making an unconsidered decision,” Ralph added.
The laws are designed to help ensure that women are informed about the abortion, its risks and alternatives, and the development of their unborn child. Waiting period requirements also prevent women from being rushed into a decision that she may later regret.
Abortion advocates already are using the study to claim that these laws are useless, but the results are suspect given the source of the study. The University of California, San Francisco has produced a number of questionable research studies that fall in line with the pro-abortion movement’s agenda.
In August, a study from the university’s Bixby Center claimed that the abortion pill is safe for women, despite strong evidence to the contrary. The center receives funding from abortion activists including billionaire Warren Buffett, who also is a huge donor to Planned Parenthood.
In reaction to that study, Americans United for Life Acting President and Senior Counsel Clarke Forsythe commented, “A new study by abortion industry advocates released today should be met with the same skepticism we would give to tobacco industry findings that their products are ‘safe.’”
University of Michigan Dearborn Professor Michael New, PhD, found major flaws in another 2012 study from the university that claimed women who sought abortions but were turned away suffered more financially and emotionally than the women who had abortions. He said the researchers used a faulty comparison and tracked only a small number of women. New also said the study was not peer reviewed, and the full results did not appear to be publicly available.
Pro-life leaders have blasted other studies from the university as based on “propaganda” rather than “science,” and noted that funding for the research came from foundations with pro-abortion and population control agendas.
