In the late 1960s when those in favor of
abortion began to push to legalize the procedure, they argued, in part, that abortion would be a rare choice, an option for women in life-threatening or other desperate circumstances. Very quickly after legalization, however, abortion became anything but rare.
Today, the number of unborn babies who die from abortion dwarves the number of victims from our bloodiest wars or from our deadliest diseases. Each year, thousands of
abortions are done on babies big enough to cradle in your arms. Almost half of the women walking into abortion clinics have already had at least one previous abortion.
Where do these
statistics come from? For the most part, two organizations compile national
data on abortions: the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). The more
detailed, but definitely not unbiased, source is the AGI. The AGI is a "special affiliate" of Planned Parenthood, which, in turn, is the country''s largest provider of abortion and its most vocal advocate.
Even though the CDC
collects data annually, the reason the AGI''s figures are more useful is that the AGI actively solicits numbers from all possible abortion providers; there were 3,156 on its list in 1993. The CDC, on the other hand, relies on state health departments and other agencies to voluntarily send in abortion data. Thus, because of the essentially passive way the CDC collects data, it generally reports 200,000 to 300,000 fewer abortions than does the AGI. Another advantage is that the AGI occasionally provides detailed demographic
information on abortion patients.
The AGI usually publishes its statistics in its journal,
Family Planning Perspectives. However it often goes years without reporting data on abortion; thus when it does its statistics are already two or more years out of date.
Despite these drawbacks, the following statistical information still shows us just how thoroughly abortion has permeated our culture.
More abstracts about the Information on abortion 1