Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe syndicated columnist, calls into question her reliability as a journalist by trotting out an old urban legend, long since discredited, here [2007 UPDATE: Note how the Washington Post Writers Group has removed her original article from the current page with that URL]:

"After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions don't have to imagine a world without choices."

"Dr. Christopher Tietze, a leading pro-abortion statistician for Planned Parenthood, The Centers for Disease Control, etc., called this claim of 5,000-10,000 deaths a year prior to legalization 'unmitigated nonsense.' Noting that 45,000 women of reproductive age die each year from all causes, Tietze states, 'It is inconceivable that so large a number as 5,000-10,000 are from one source.'" (from Harvard Divinity School, Kennedy Foundation International Conference on Abortion, Washington D.C., 1967. Also published in Scientific American, Abortion, Tietze & Lewit, January, 1969, Vol. 220, No. 1, pp. 21, 23).

NARAL Co-founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson admitted: "I knew the figure was totally false. But in the morality of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of the way to correct it with honest statistics. The overriding concern was to get the [criminalization of abortion] laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible." (Aborting America, Doubleday Publishers., p. 193)

Dr. Andre Hellegers--before his death, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Georgetown University--testified for the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 25, 1974 that maternal deaths from illegal abortions had reduced from 1,231 in 1942, down to 133 deaths by 1968 because of better medical care and antibiotics.

In 1972, the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics recorded 39 deaths from illegal abortions and 25 deaths from legal abortions.

And they pay HER the big bucks.

UPDATE from Emily: I've written to Ellen Goodman at ellengoodman@globe.com. I gave her the link to this discussion and asked her if she is going to stand by what she wrote last week. I've also written to Christine Chinlund, the Boston Globe's ombudsman, at ombud@globe.com.