Joseph M. Scheidler: USA Today Wrong

USA Today had a opinion piece entitled Our view on reproductive rights: Abortion foes take new tack that it published on 21 November 2008. Joseph Scheidler posted an excellent response.

Quoting the Guttmacher Institute, USA Today said in the piece that the following reasons were responsibility for the 30 year decline in abortion: "The wider use of contraceptives and more effective birth control are major reasons." Joseph Scheidler doesn't waste any time & gets right to the point with what the real reasons for the decline are. & it isn't what USA Today claims they are. But, when you really don't want to decrease the number of abortions why would you tell the truth? No, you use Planned Parenthood's PR lap dog, knowing that they will give you the (alledged) facts you want.

Here is Joseph Scheidler's response, with the truth that was sorely missing from USA Today's piece:

Opposing view: Compromise equals betrayal

By Joseph M. Scheidler
Some "pro-life" organizations are proposing to begin working with groups that support abortion. Their concept is to accept as fact that we cannot outlaw abortion any time soon, and so we should work on reducing the number of abortions.
The concept sounds OK on the surface, but according to Jacqueline Salmon in The Washington Post, the coalition plans to avoid areas of possible conflict such as restrictions on abortion and abstinence-only programs. These are the very things that do reduce abortion.
There is no evidence that increasing social programs — such as low-cost health care and day care, college grants and maternity homes — will impact a woman's abortion decision. It is rare in our experience to find a woman who says the reason she is choosing abortion is that she doesn't have day care, or that she'd rather go to college.
Those of us who have spent years outside abortion clinics, talking with abortion-bound women, are keenly aware of what leads women there. Often, the woman feels she has no choice because someone important in her life refuses to support a decision to keep the baby.
More than 3,000 pregnancy centers in the U.S. are ready to help a woman with material needs, emotional support, counseling and medical care. Anyone who wants to stop abortion should promote these centers.
I challenge anyone who wants to help pregnant women to actually go to an abortion clinic. You'll see the young girl who doesn't want an abortion, but whose family doesn't want to be "burdened" with a baby. She's not making her own choice. She is making someone else's choice. Or the young mother whose husband doesn't want their child. Whose choice is she making?
We see the effort to combine pro-life and pro-choice forces as a betrayal on the part of the pro-lifers. Besides, it has been tried, several times. And it always fails. You can't compromise with evil. And abortion is an intrinsic evil.
Women are not looking for government-operated social programs. They're looking for someone to care, someone to love them. Government programs cannot do that.
Joseph M. Scheidler is national director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League.