January 11, 2011

Please send me your comments!

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D. NRL Director of Education & Research

Though pro-lifers wish that abortions had continued the decline seen over the past two decades, the good news from the latest abortion statistics is that, despite the heavy promotion of the abortion industry, the numbers haven't really gone back up.

A new report released today by the Guttmacher Institute (formerly a special research affiliate of Planned Parenthood), "Abortion Incidence and Access to Services in the United States, 2008," found that for 2008, the number of abortions remained essentially level with the numbers it reported for 2005--its last published survey. The report found 1.212 million abortions in 2008, compared with 1.206 million abortions in 2005, the difference accounted for by abortions from previously uncounted abortion "providers" discovered since the 2005 survey.

Thanks to pro-life education, legislation, and outreach, as well as concerted efforts to offer women positive, practical, life-affirming alternatives to abortion, abortions began to decline twenty years ago. They decreased from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million by 2005, a drop of 25%.

But anyone who thought that the abortion industry would stand idly by while their empire crumbled was sadly mistaken. As women began to turn away from abortion, they launched an aggressive campaign to recast the image of abortion and the industry.

Women told the industry that they were uncomfortable with surgical abortion, with the cutting, the scraping, and with its possible effects on their future fertility. They found the whole procedure frightening and intimidating.

In the late 1980s, the industry began developing RU486, a chemical abortifacient that promised (falsely) to make abortion safe, simple, and easy. That pill was approved in the U.S. in September of 2000, in the waning months of the Clinton administration, and the industry went to work marketing it to both women and doctors.

The latest report shows that that promotional effort had an impact. At least 199,000 of the 1,212,400 abortions performed in the U.S. in 2008 were what the report calls "medication abortions"--chemical abortions involving RU486 (94%) or methotrexate (6%), another chemical abortifacient. This is nearly 38,000 more of these abortions than Guttmacher recorded in its study of 2005.

RU-486 not only goes after a whole new customer base with the false promise of an easy, safe alternative to surgical abortion, but its increased use also lets the abortion industry shift to a method that requires less overhead to administer, thereby adding to their ever-increasing bottom line. With the median cost of $490, Guttmacher found for a chemical abortion, the new method represents more than $97.5 million in gross revenues for an industry already making hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some of these women would probably have had surgical abortions if chemical abortions were not available, but it is not unrealistic to believe that a significant number would likely have chosen to carry their babies rather than endure the surgery.

The report also found at least 1,793 abortion "providers" in the United States. Significantly, among these, it found an increase in the number offering abortions after the midway point of pregnancy (generally considered 20 weeks after the woman's last menstrual period or LMP). Twenty-three percent offered abortions after 20 weeks LMP, compared to 20% in the 2005 report. Eleven percent offered abortions after 24 weeks LMP compared to 8% three years earlier.

The abortion industry has also spent millions to modernize and refurbish their offices, hoping to attract a broader (and wealthier) clientele with giant new megaclinics with decorator colors and furnishings. Bringing in the best graphics people in the business to design websites and develop marketing campaigns helps create an image of the industry as vibrant, modern, and hip.

All these factors have an impact, borne out by data from the report.

Guttmacher found that there were 164 facilities that offered chemical, but not surgical abortion. Conceivably, these could be places that once offered surgical abortion but gave it up when the new product showed up. More likely is that these are places where abortions were not offered before. As many readers know, several places in Iowa, some in rural or suburban places where there has never been an abortion clinic before, are now offering web-cam chemical abortions in which a doctor, miles away, clicks a button on a computer to open a drawer containing abortifacients at the woman's location.

Increases or decreases in numbers often boil down to local factors. Illinois' abortion totals increased by nearly 4,000 from 2005 to 2008, a time frame that just happened to coincide with the opening of a $7.5 million, 22,000 square foot mega-clinic in Aurora by Planned Parenthood in 2007. The abortion rate for the state rose by 9%, even while the rate in many neighboring states was going down.

All during this time, however, many of these clinics were kept alive by funding from local, state, and federal governments. This explains not only the tired old call for more "family planning funding" at the end of Guttmacher's report, but also the latest move, in an era of "health care reform," to identify abortion as a "legal, needed and basic health care service."

The abortion battle has long featured the struggle between the culture of life and the culture of death. Our side has made considerable progress, dropping the number of abortions in the U.S. by a quarter. The other side has launched a significant counteroffensive to hold their turf. This report shows us that they have had some impact.

To see those numbers decline again, we will have to help people understand that the new chemical abortions are still abortions, that they are difficult and dangerous, that they take the lives of unborn children and put the lives of their mothers at risk.

We will have to help them see that for all the decorator colors, new bricks, shiny steel, the new clinics are still killing centers run by the same crew selling the same product – death.

We will need to continue to make clear that every abortion stops a beating heart, that each abortion is an assault on our humanity, that every abortion impoverishes us all, that there is, and there must be, a better way.

Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

Part Three
Part One