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Wednesday December 14, 2005



Abortion Statistics for 2004 Reveal Over 84,000 Australian Babies Aborted


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By Terry Vanderheyden

CANBERRA, December 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An Australian health statistics authority has estimated that the lives of 84,218 children were ended by abortion last year.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics also showed that the abortion rate has jumped by 151% since a tally in 2000, when 7.8 of 1,000 women ended their pregnancies in abortion; in 2003, 11.8 out of every 1,000 women had an abortion, while last year the number was 19.7 per 1,000.

Year 2000 and 2003 data was incomplete, however, because before now data on induced abortion was not available on a routine basis Australia-wide. 

The relative abortion rate is highest for 20 to 24 year-olds, at 32.7 per 1,000 women. Abortions committed at private abortuaries accounted for 76% of all procedures. The most commonly reported abortion procedure was suction curettage of uterus, which comprised 85.7% of abortions.

Suction is the most common method of abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy – 94.6 % of all Australian abortions were committed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. 

In a suction abortion, general or local anaesthesia is given to the mother and her cervix is quickly dilated. A suction curette (hollow tube with a knife-edged tip) is inserted into the womb. This instrument is then connected to a vacuum machine by a transparent tube. The vacuum suction, 29 times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner, tears the fetus and placenta into small pieces which are sucked through the tube into a bottle and discarded.

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