Abortion at Thirty Year Low

  • Thread starter Thread starter Galnextdoor
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

Galnextdoor

Guest
According to Yahoo news this morning, abortion is at a 30 year low in the U.S. It’s down 33%. It’s great to see such a positive trend. Teenage abortion is down 50%. 🙂 Abortion remains highest among ethnic single women who already have children. 😦
 
Galnextdoor said:
According to Yahoo news this morning, abortion is at a 30 year low in the U.S. It’s down 33%. It’s great to see such a positive trend. Teenage abortion is down 50%. 🙂 Abortion remains highest among ethnic single women who already have children. 😦
Click to expand...
Do you have a link so we can see why?

Jim
 
Here’s a link:
news.yahoo.com/story//hsn/20080924/hl_hsn/usabortionrateat30yearlow
Abortions in the United States fell 33 percent between 1974 and 2004, but sizeable differences among racial and economic groups continue to exist as to who gets an abortion, a new report says.
Click to expand...
While the number of abortions among teens has also dropped dramatically, down 50 percent, abortion rates are still high among older women with children and poor women, according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute.
Click to expand...
“There’s been a shift in the population of women obtaining abortions relative to 30 years ago,” said Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at the institute. “They are older, they are more likely to be unmarried, more likely to be mothers, and they are more likely to be women of color.”
Click to expand...
 
There is a very real answer for this. Abortion numbers are gathered primarily by the Guttmacher Institute (a Planned Parenthood org I might add). They track physical abortions performed across the country in clinics and hospitals through records that by law must be reported.

What they DON’T track is how many abortions are caused by the “morning after pill” and by RU-486. We won’t even discuss how many are caused by the BC pill or IUD.

So sure - as the availability of private forms of abortion become more readily available, that are never tracked and never could be tracked, the number of physical abortions will appear to go down. In reality I would wager a guess that the overall number is actually up, but we will never know it (and I’m sure PP likes it this way), because the government is now allowing more and more ways to privately end a pregnancy.

So - I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. As usual.

~Liza
 
Lizaanne, your second source says that the Guttmacher Instutite was founded in 1968 as a semi-autonomous division of Planned Parenthood, but it then goes on to say:
the Guttmacher Institute became an independent, not-for-profit corporation in 1977
Click to expand...
So for 31 years it has been independent of Planned Parenthood.

Your first source doesn’t give any information about the Guttmacher Institute/PP connection beyond what was in your second source.
 
lizaanne,
I’m not sure how wide-spread the RU486 use is, and its not something a woman should take without being monitored by her doctor. There’s a certain amount of health risk involved. Also, if she’s too far along in the pregnancy for the pill to work, then a surgical abortion is usually recommended, because there’s a good chance that the baby will be severely deformed. So at that point the abortion would be registered and part of the statistics.

Also, from my knowledge on it, the birth control pills that are usually prescribed, don’t cause an abortion, because they prevent pregnancy altogether. So, of course this would not be part of the statistics.

Jim
 
Guttmacher gets its figures from PP, I believe.

Anyway, this whole article is a classic example of why the media is a bunch of lying weasles;
The rate of abortions in the United States has dropped 33 percent from 1974 to 2004. In 1980 there were 29 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44; by 2004, that number had dropped to 20 per 1,000 women, according to the report.
Click to expand...
So, it is the RATE of abortions, not the NUMBER!

This is a substantial difference - the population of the USA has grown by roughly, ironically enough, 33% in this time. Assuming an equal distribution of women of those ages, then that means roughly the same number of abortions.

But there ISN’T an equal distribution of women aged 15-40 between those two dates; the population has been getting older as the birth-rate has declined. And the article admits that older women are still likely to have abortions.

Also, bear in mind that this is abortions per 1000 women. That’s great - it’s not 1000 PREGNANT women. The fertility rate has been dropping - because of contraception use (much of which causes abortions). So, basically, surgical abortion rate is falling because fertility is falling.

All of these conclusions is supported by the number of procured abortions, not the rate - figures are here;

nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/abortionstats.html

Those figures are from Guttmacher and the CDC. I have no reason to disbelieve them - the Guttmacher ones are more reliable.

While it is good news that fewer abortions are being performed per 1000 women, the fact remains that more abortions are being performed now than there were in 1974. More babies are being killed.

And that doesn’t count babies killed via chemical abortions or IUD etc. The actual figure of abortions is probably 7 to 20 times higher than the surgical figures suggest.

So, while it is good news that the rate of abortion is dropping, the truth of the matter is i) not good and ii) entirely avoided and hidden by this article.
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Also, from my knowledge on it, the birth control pills that are usually prescribed, don’t cause an abortion, because they prevent pregnancy altogether
Click to expand...
Regretably, your knowledge is not accurate - the standard chemical birth control (“The Pill”) works in three ways;

i) Preventing ovulation
ii) Preventing implatation (i.e. aborting)
iii) Aborting the fetus

Basically, if the first fails, the second has a go. And then the third. This is why the success rate is so high (95%, IIRC). An estimate, based on regular sexual activity, suggests 1.8 children aborted a year by a woman on the Pill (peoples’ millages may vary, of course).

The simple fact is that most contraception (with the exception of barrier methods, obviously) either is or can be abortificant.
 
mdzialo said:
How many abortions were performed last year?
Click to expand...
I was unable to find any reliable stats when I did a search for this very thing for a TV show earlier this year. The last figure I have is an estimate of roughly 1.2million in 2004.
 
OK. So let’s say you’re in a war. Your side just lost 1.2 million dead last year. TV news says, hey, great news, only 1.2 million dead last year.

Of course, they don’t say it like that, which raises the question, Why don’t they say it like that?

It’s because the people who run things want abortion. Republicans and democrats are do nothing because they are not in charge.

Same goes for the financial crisis, so called.
 
Gee, a good way to get rates to drop is to not collect all the data. Many states have discontinued the collection of abortion statistics and the CDC relies on voluntray reporting in large measure. In fact the numbers reported to the CDC are often smaller than what PP reports to the Gutenbacher institute.

For example:
Official abortion statistics are often low due to incomplete reporting. In the United States, for example, not all states mandate such reporting. Even in those states that require or encourage reporting of abortion statistics, this reporting is incomplete (as demonstrated by higher numbers reported to abortion advocacy organizations). From 1988 to 1997, the total number of U.S. abortions reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control was 11.3% lower than the total number reported to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research branch of Planned Parenthood). In 1998 four states discontinued state-level gathering of abortion statistics, contributing to the 25.4% drop in CDC figures from 1997 to 1998.
Click to expand...
citation

Statistics are worthless with out a reliable and accurate method of collecting data.
 
The problem is that although we Catholics believe that life begins at conception, not all people believe that a fetelized egg, is in fact a human being.

Different religions, including Jews believe that a human being doesn’t exist until viability and with the exception of strict orthodoxed Jews, they allow for first trimester abortions.

So, to trying to claim that the use of BC pills is equal to abortions, isn’t going to be accepted by the science community and therefore, they will not be counted in the statistics.

Jim
 
JMJ

Dear Corki,

You are correct. The data are immensely flawed. For details, see the DATA SOURCES section of the original Guttmacher document, page 4: guttmacher.org/

The report goes into much more detail than the Yahoo article.

Totus tuus,

Lynn
Corki said:
Gee, a good way to get rates to drop is to not collect all the data. Many states have discontinued the collection of abortion statistics and the CDC relies on voluntray reporting in large measure. In fact the numbers reported to the CDC are often smaller than what PP reports to the Gutenbacher institute.

For example:

citation

Statistics are worthless with out a reliable and accurate method of collecting data.
Click to expand...
 
Even if the asserted stats are true, two things could easily account for it.
  1. After 30 years of abortion on demand, there are fewer native Americans (I don’t mean Indians, but people born here) relatively speaking, than was formerly the case.
  2. The “just at replacement” birth rate in the U.S. is largely due to Hispanics, most of whom do not believe in abortion. As they replace the “native” population, and unless they change their views, abortion will likely decrease slowly. But it is still at a staggeringly high level when the absolute numbers are considered.
 
Even one less abortion is a good thing. I think that the pro-life movement sometimes concentrates to narrowly on the political side of the issue–the crimilization of abortion. While I agree that abortion should be criminalized as a human life issue, it can only really have significant effect in tandem with cultural and social shifts. Thus pro-lifers should focus broadly on preventing teen pregnancies, encouraging adoption, creating safe havens for single pregnant women, and, as some here have said, educating people on so-called “abortifacient” contraceptives. Many are already doing just these things of course; I just think they should be encouraged even more.
 
C’mon people; be willing to accept a little credit here. The pro-life movement is focusing on all those things, and it’s having an effect on the beliefs and opinions of other Americans.

And the killing is being slowed thereby. Not to the degree we’d like, but we are having an effect. God expects us to fight the good fight, not to do miracles.

Keep on fighting.
 
Is there a cause of death in the US that surpasses abortion?

Including war, guns, hunting accidents, stupidity?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top