WASHINGTON, D.C., November 24, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — According to most of the nation's state health departments, abortion continues on the decline across the country.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control released its abortion figures, based on reporting from 47 states, but not including Maryland, New Hampshire, or California (the country's most populous state).
In 2013, the CDC's “Abortion Surveillance Report” lists 664,435 abortions reported from those states.
The importance of the report is not in providing a complete total of abortions in the country, because not all states report and because the states themselves depend on abortion businesses' claims in an all-cash industry rampant with underreporting, but the report does provide figures for analyzing upward or downward trends.
The numbers also offer an estimate of the rate of abortions at 12.5 per woman of child-bearing age (15-44), and the ratio of abortions at 200 per 1,000 live births.
Nevertheless, prolife organizations are encouraged by the latest abortion figures.
“The decline in the number of abortions, and in the abortion rates and ratios, is a clear indication that pregnant women are increasingly less likely to see abortion as the desired solution to an unexpected pregnancy,” National Right to Life (NRTL) director of education and research Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon wrote in an emailed press release.
O’Bannon concluded that prolife efforts are paying off. “Right-to-life legislative, educational and outreach efforts to increase awareness of the unborn child's humanity certainly continue to play a critical role in the abortion decline,” he said.
The news was not all encouraging. Drug-induced abortions are on the rise, despite increasing evidence of the harm abortifacient chemicals inflict on women's health. O'Bannon characterizes this trend as “a clear indication that the aggressive push of these by the abortion industry and its media allies is having some impact.”
The dangers of medical abortions is not only in the harmful effects of the drugs, but in the fact that increasing chemical abortions moves the bloody industry toward smaller, lesser-staffed facilities that do not have the necessary life-saving equipment needed after a botched procedure or incomplete chemical abortion.
NRTL president Carol Tobias summarized, “We give thanks that more women are rejecting abortion and choosing life for their unborn children, but we must remain vigilant in the face of an abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, that not only continues to perform hundreds of thousands of abortions every year, but continues to deny the damage abortion does to mothers, their children and our society as a whole.”