By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This is the latest instance of where we look back at what ran in NRL News Today on this date in years past.
Once upon a time (1968, to be exact), the Guttmacher Institute was housed inside Planned Parenthood. According to its official history, once renamed after a long-time PPFA president, it was “incorporated as an entirely independent nonprofit policy research institute with its own Board in 1977, but remained a special affiliate of PPFA.”
Then in 2007, “Guttmacher’s special affiliation status with PPFA was terminated, and PPFA’s financial support to the Institute, then at $395,000 (3.3% of Guttmacher’s total budget), was phased out over the following three years.”
In a word, the Guttmacher Institute was birthed, nurtured, and eventually spun off from PPFA.
Why the history lesson? Holding an ostensibly independent status, the Guttmacher Institute’s research—which coincidences 100% with the policy aims of Planned Parenthood —is treated with the utmost deference by the media. Where every word from pro-lifers is dismissed or treated with an attitude approaching scorn, the media swoons at every conclusion from the Guttmacher Institute.
That is especially the case with state laws, such as those requiring that Ob-Gyn perform abortions and have admitting privileges at a local hospital when there are complications.
Guttmacher’s Elizabeth Nash and Megan K. Donovan have argued admitting privileges are “unnecessary” and will “imperil abortion access” (although to maintain the façade of objectivity, the last three words are followed by a question mark).
Of course, from the pro-abortion perspective, it goes without saying—although Nash and Donovan say it anyway—there are zero benefits to requiring abortionists to be able to follow the women they’ve aborted to a hospital. To them, “continuity of care” is just a pro-life talking point.
But it’s not! Having admitting privileges at a local hospital is critical—that is, if the health of women is actually important to you.