Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has been accused by pro-life advocate Charmaine Yoest of badly misrepresenting her in an opinion piece published last week.
“I had the courtesy to talk to you. We can disagree. But you should at least reflect what I actually said accurately,” she said this weekend on social media.
Yoest is the founder and president of Americans United for Life, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group.
In an op-ed headlined “Antiabortion advocates have a logic problem,” Milbank wrote that pro-life activists incorrectly believe that tougher restrictions on abortion will result in fewer terminated pregnancies. Rather, he said, increased access to contraception is the best way to decrease abortion rates.
Between 2008 and 2011, “a combination of increased contraceptive use and greater reliance on highly effective methods helped reduce overall levels of unintended pregnancy and subsequent abortion,” Milbank wrote, quoting the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
The institute specifically credited the decrease in the number of abortions on the increased usage of “long-acting, reversible contraceptives,” such as IUDs.
If pro-life activists were actually seriously about saving the unborn, they would focus more on increasing access to contraception and less on things like bans on abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy, Milbank suggested.
Pro-life groups and their allies in Congress won’t do this, however, because many of their supporters oppose contraception, he added. Milbank then suggested that Yoest is one such character who stubbornly opposes the abortion-reducing benefits of contraception.
Milbank wrote, “Charmaine Yoest … told me that ‘I haven’t seen anything’ to convince her that more contraceptive use reduces abortion.”
Yoest then reportedly directed Milbank to the Guttmacher Institute’s 2011 findings that between 2001 and 2008, a smaller number of pregnancies resulting in abortions “could represent increased difficulty in accessing abortion services.”
The problem is: The Americans United for Life founder said this weekend that her conversation with Milbank didn’t quite play out this way.
“[H]ere’s what I actually said,” she wrote in a tweet. “Abortions dropped at the same time as an increase in ‘unintended pregnancies.’ ”
Yoest attached a screenshot of her emailed conversation with Milbank.
When contacted for comment by the Washington Examiner, Milbank said he was unaware that Yoest had taken issue with his column.
“I talked to her for a long time on the phone and she was very particular about the phrasing ‘I haven’t seen anything’ convincing about contraception use and abortion — rather than a denial that any such link could exist,” he told the Examiner.
“I’m a bit puzzled by her complaint, because we talked during the interview about her view that increased abortion restrictions were reducing abortions — and I thought the fact that Guttmacher agreed with this point was validating what she was saying,” he said.
After the Examiner contacted Milbank for comment, he responded on Twitter to Yoest’s objections.
“Puzzling that you’d reference the email you sent but not the extensive interview that preceded it,” he tweeted. “Puzzling too that you object to me quoting Guttmacher report supporting your claim that restrictions reduce abortions.”
When asked why he thinks Yoest protested his column, Milbank told the Examiner he is not entirely sure.
“Maybe she thought the quote from the Guttmacher report was actually from her?” he posited. “Or perhaps she was making a different point with the Guttmacher report — but I thought the admission from an abortion-rights outfit that abortion restrictions reduce abortions was pretty compelling and supported Charmaine’s case nicely.”
Yoest did not respond to the Examiner’s request for comment.
