APA puts political correctness above public safety

Heavy blogging in South Dakota these days about the politically-biased, and politically-timed APA report (pdf) on whether or not abortion hurts women. Bob Ellis at Dakota Voice has a line up of fine posts detailing the problems with the APA report. Anti-lifers fully disregard the fact that the Supreme Court, the 8th Circuit of Appeals, the British Royal Academy of Psychiatrists, 100 American Scientists, Medical and Mental Health Professionals and 3000 post-abortive women disagree with the APA report that says abortion doesn't really hurt women. They callously conclude this has no harmful effect on women rather than let the women speak up and tell you their story.

Commenting on my earlier post, Dianne, speaking as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor here in South Dakota (working now on her doctoral dissertation on abortion decision-making and subsequent psychological sequelae) points out how the Chair of APA Abortion Report Task Force, Dr. Brenda Major, is being investigated for violating APA ethics rules for "consistently refusing to allow her own data on abortion and mental health effects to be reanalyzed by other researchers."

Major, a proponent of abortion rights, has even evaded a request from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to deliver copies of data she collected under a federal grant. Because her study of emotional reactions two years after an abortion was federally funded, the data she collected is actually federal property.

So, the anti-lifer's can continue to seek to discredit a couple of the main critics of the APA report saying they are not credible, but the entirety of the report itself is fully tarnished because of the demonstrated bias and unethical practices of the reports main author. The report belongs in the trash because it will possibly result in more lives being trashed. As Bob Ellis says in the following post, "What a shame that the APA would put convenience and political correctness ahead of public safety."

Here are Bob's posts on the topic.

APA When Bias Elipses Science

Regarding anti-lifers, Bob points out:

They apparently have a love-hate relationship with science. When biased pronouncements like the one from the APA make them feel good about killing innocent human life, science is god. When actual, factual science (such as the fact that unborn children have human DNA, and that DNA is unique from the mother, making the child a unique human being) presents a problem for their "oh, it's just tissue" argument, it gets neatly ignored.

I think South Dakotans still listen to each other more than national special interest groups like the APA that are long past having anything credible to say. Bob Ellis' reprinting of Sturgis resident Geri Rigg's testimony needs to be read by everyone in our state who still wonders if abortion hurts women.

I could endure another rape but not another abortion

Today Bob re-posts another testimony for our consideration.

If abortion had not be illegal.

The Alpha Center released a statement yesterday also refuting any delusions that abortion doesn't harm women. I thought it ended with a punch…

The APA is ignoring the millions of women whose psychological needs are not being addressed; they are emphasizing what Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have said all along – it’s no big deal, it’ll only hurt for a moment.

The anti-lifers callousness to the pain of post-abortive women reaches a new height a post over at Dakota Women today. After briefly conceding that some women regret their abortion, they reveal their hard hearts. No kidding, these gals actually posted about how a women regretting her abortion is no different than a person who regrets ordering a pizza. These folks are extreme and fully unreasonable. The point over at Dakota Women was that the women who are hurt by abortion are just anecdotal examples and we shouldn't prohibit abortion nationally just because some are directly hurt by it. Actually it's more than just "some." The Alpha Center statement yesterday noted…

the general consensus among medical science scholars is that a minimum of 10 to 30 percent of women who have elective abortions suffer prolonged, negative psychological consequences including depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and suicide ideation.

But, just for the sake of it, let's say it's a far smaller number. Dakota Women thinks it's okay to play russian roulette with a major medical procedure effecting women. They are in effect saying, "So what if some women suffer significantly for years and years and years." But wait, I thought these people cared about women. No. Actually the kill-rate of abortion is 100% - 50% are female unborn children being violently ripped apart and 50% are unborn boy babies who suffer the same fate. Or, one dead - the baby, and one wounded - the woman.