A report released Feb. 3, 2014, by the Guttmacher Institute found that abortion rates and ratios are continuing to decline in the United States – but downplayed the role that public debate over the rights of unborn children have played in this trend.
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n its “Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2011” report, the Guttmacher Institute (originally founded as a research affiliate of Planned Parenthood) reported that for 2011, there were 1.05 million abortions in the United States – 550,000 fewer than the peak of 1.6 million in 1990.
Read National Right to Life’s full story on the pro-life explanation of why the numbers are dropping by clicking here.
While hardly perfect, everyone agrees that even although Guttmacher is a spin-off from Planned Parenthood, its numbers are the most complete. The Centers for Disease Control breaks out the numbers by demographic groupings, but the CDC admits (because its approach is more passive) that its totals very much understate the actual number of abortions that take place.
According to the National Right to Life, Guttmacher’s explanations for the decline include such things as“nearly foolproof” long-term contraceptives like intrauterine devices and economic uncertainty.
But National Right to Life reported previously that there were some quiet admissions on Guttmacher’s part that protective pro-life laws may have played some minor, minor role.
Clearly those laws, as well as other pro-life initiatives, have in fact played a much larger role in explaining why the abortion rate has declined.
