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Trying to Make Sense of the Statistics

 

Trying to Make Sense of the Statistics 

Trying to make sense of the statistics, Marilyn Carroll asked a good question concerning the abortion statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Flip's response is at the end of this report.

Flip,

Do these stats agree with ours? Do they agree with Our Nation is Changing?

MC

Last Updated January 9, 2003

Abortion Statistics
By Carrie Gordon Earll

"The United States has one of the highest abortion rates among developed countries." (Facts in Brief, Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1995, New York, NY)

Reported number of legal abortions in the United States for selected years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Abortion
Surveillance Report, June 7, 2002:

www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5103a1.htm

1972: 586,760 1994: 1,267,415
1980: 1,297,606 1995: 1,210,883
1985: 1,328,570 1996: 1,221,585
1990: 1,429,577 1997: 1,186,039
1992: 1,359,145 *1998: 884,273

*At first glance, the table listed above appears to show a considerable 25 percent drop in the number of reported abortions performed in the U.S. in 1998 as compared to 1997. Upon closer examination, however, the decrease is 2 percent and this is why: In 1998, the number of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) excluded data from Alaska, California, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. In order to compare reported abortions in 1998 to previous years, the CDC recalculated the reported number of abortions for 1995, 1996 and 1997, minus these four states. Using these adjusted figures, the 1998 total of 884,273 represents a 2 percent decrease from the 1997 total of 900,171 from the same reporting areas.

The CDC attributes the majority of the decrease in reported abortions in 1998 to the absence of California data. In 1997, the CDC estimated the number of abortions in California at 275,700. The CDC acknowledges that the numbers of abortions reported to the agency are probably lower than the actual number performed. The lack of uniform, mandatory abortion reporting for all fifty states hampers the CDC's ability to accurately report the number of abortion performed in the U.S, as evidenced in the 1998 report.

According to the CDC report, in 1998:

40 percent women who had abortions in the U.S. had no other children; 45 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. had at least one previous abortion; 20 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. were married; 80 percent were unmarried. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of the nation's leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood:

At current rates, an estimated 43 percent of American women will have at least one abortion by the age of 45. Two-thirds of all abortions are among never-married women. Fifty-two percent of U.S. women having abortions are younger than 25 years old. About 13,000 abortions each year are attributed to rape and incest representing 1 percent of all abortions. (Guttmacher statistics from "Facts in Brief: Induced Abortion," 2002)

Copyright © 2003 Focus on the Family.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

This is Flip's response:

The CDC does not provide statistical information on the number of surgical abortions performed in America any later than 1998. Their reporting in the year 1998 at 884,234 reported abortions excludes California, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Oklahoma. These four states did not report in the year 1998 for some reason.

The CDC does not give a good accounting of the number of surgical abortions reported, and has admitted much the same. The best we can ascertain is that the number of abortions reached their height in 1990 at approximately 1.8 million and have decreased almost every year to a low of 1.1 million in 2000.

This means a decline of almost 40 %. This is absolutely incredible news and should give pause for all of us to ask the question, Why?

We don't have the statistics for the most recent years 2001-2002 but if the rate continues to drop we can pretty accurately predict that the number of surgical abortions done in America has dropped below 1 million.

"Why are these numbers dropping so quickly? The answer is found on our web page in the new brochure, "The Heart of our Nation is Changing."