Abortion Has Decreased Significantly In Last Two Decades

The prestigious Guttmacher Institute has released a new report on abortion in the United States. The report focuses on the years between 1991 and 2011 (the last year for which complete statistics are available). And that report has good news, regardless of which side of the abortion debate one happens to be on.

It seems that since 1991 the number of reported abortions in the United States has decreased -- and not by just a tiny amount. It has decreased significantly -- from about 1.56 million in 1991 to about 1.06 million in 2011. That's a decrease of about 500,000 per year (or about 1/3). And it's not just the number of abortions that has dropped significantly. The rate of abortion has also dropped (from 27.4 per 1,000 women to about 21.2). The report then goes on to examine why this decrease has happened.

I'm sure fundamentalist anti-choice people would like to think the decrease has been to all the new laws that make it more difficult to get an abortion, but that's not what the Guttmacher Institute found. These new laws have done little, since a person needing an abortion will find a way to get one. The new laws have just made it more difficult, more expensive, and more dangerous -- but they are not causing the decrease.

The decrease is mainly due to the wider availability of cheap and effective contraceptives. This makes a lot of sense. Preventing a pregnancy has always been the best way to prevent an abortion. And now that Obamacare has kicked in, requiring insurance companies to provide free contraceptives to those on their rolls, we can expect the abortion numbers to fall even further.

The makes it clear why the national organization representing obstetricians and gynecologists has recommended that contraceptives be sold over the counter to women without any age restrictions. They know these drugs and methods of preventing pregnancies are both safe and the best way to prevent abortions.

And it also makes the stance taken by many fundamentalists to make no sense at all. They oppose both abortion and contraception (the best way to prevent abortions). One would think if they truly opposed abortions, they would happily support making contraceptives widely available and affordable for all women. The fact they they oppose both means they are just promoting their own religious views, and consider those religious views more important than preventing abortions. Instead they just want to make abortions illegal -- a religious stance that has been shown throughout history to be ineffective in preventing abortions, and only makes the procedure much more dangerous for women.