WASHINGTON, D.C., October 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The mainstream media have latched onto a study claiming the full implementation of the HHS mandate will reduce abortion by 40 percent or more. However, critics say the report’s thesis is not only incorrect but backwards: ObamaCare would dramatically increase the number of abortions.
The study, which was published Thursday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, offered free contraception to more than 9,000 women at high risk of pregnancy but who wished to avoid motherhood.
After testing “women” as young as 14, the study’s lead author, Jeff Peipert of Washington University in Missouri, found 75 percent of participants chose Interuterine Devices (IUDs) or another long-term form of birth control implant. The number of pregnancies fell.
“We were essentially simulating ObamaCare,” said Gina Secura, one of Peipert’s colleagues.
A representative headline announcing the study, which was released Thursday, read: “New Study Shows ObamaCare Will Reduce Number of Abortions.”
Numerous mainstream media outlets repeated the assertion that full implementation of the HHS mandate would reduce abortion.
However, critics say the media ignored or obscured a vital fact: IUDs themselves are known to cause abortions.
“According to their patient information inserts, all of the longer-acting methods sometimes act as abortifacients, killing the newly-conceived human being, which will actually lead to an increase, not a decrease, in total abortions,” Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews.com.
The IUD, which can cause an abortion by thinning the uterus’ lining, is the most popular form of contraception for Europeans over the age of 30.
According to the Life Issues Institute, “in as many as 95 percent of the cases [the IUD] does not prevent fertilization.”
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Clowes told LifeSiteNews widespread contraceptive use has additional harmful effects not covered by the study. “Getting girls and women onto the longer-acting birth control methods will cut down on surgical abortions, but will lead to many more physical complications (especially among teenagers) and an accelerated spread of STIs, against which none of the longer-acting methods protects,” he said.
Numerous studies have shown contraceptive use leads to more and riskier sexual behavior – and, after failure, often result in surgical abortion.
A January 2011 study published in the journal Contraception found that the number of Spanish women taking contraception increased from 49.1 percent to 79.9 percent between 1997 and 2007, but the number of abortions more than doubled during the same time period.
Conversely, a Chinese study found the Billings Ovulation Method (BOM), a form of natural family planning, proved more effective in preventing pregnancy than IUD use.
“Almost all so-called ‘contraceptives’ routinely fail at statistically significant rates resulting in ‘unplanned pregnancies,’” Dr. Dianne Irving, a bioethicist at Georgetown University and a former bench biochemist with the National Institutes of Health, said. “Is there any wonder that elective abortions are socially required in order to take care of such ‘accidents?’”
Clowes adds that the HHS mandate’s promoters ignore another consequence of their efforts: the potentially dire effects of a shrinking population base.
“The study managers also stress only the short-term cost savings, while completely neglecting the fact that each person born will eventually contribute millions of dollars in benefits to society,” Clowes said.
Many Western European nations, already experiencing negative population growth, have had to import young immigrants to fulfill menial labor positions. These new arrivals, who often hail from Muslim nations, have high birth rates and have failed to assimilate – a fact that has strained their relationship with populations from Sweden to England.