Missouri Governor Matt Blunt launches task force examining how abortions affect women

This is lovely.  The Associated Press reports (10/28):

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Gov. Matt Blunt, an abortion opponent, has launched the state on a scientific quest to determine how abortions affect women — a question so complex that it confounded a U.S. surgeon general.

The Governor’s Task Force on the Impact of Abortion on Women convened last week in Blunt’s Capitol office without any of the publicity and promotion that usually accompanies groups on gubernatorial missions.

Its members — all opposed to abortion — were recruited not directly by Blunt’s staff, but rather by a pair of anti-abortion activists.

“This is a very informal group of good people who believe in advancing the cause of life and believe that we should minimize the impact of abortion on society,” Blunt said when asked about his new task force during a Capitol news conference called for a different purpose.

Lest there be any confusion: The effect of abortion is not a wide-open question to Blunt. There’s no likelihood, for example, that his new task force will conclude abortion is positive.

I love this quote from Blunt:   “I certainly would begin with the presumption that abortion has a negative impact on Missouri children, Missouri women, Missouri men, because it’s harmful to society,” Blunt said.  It's harmful because it's harmful, don't you get it? 

The AP article points out that, in 1987, then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who strongly opposes abortion rights, failed in his assigned mission (by President Reagan) to find evidence of psychological trauma from abortion.   

Unfortunately, states like Missouri have only gotten encouragement for this kind of biased "research" from the Supreme Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart.