The pro-life movement begins the New Year in a celebratory mood, with a remarkable drop in abortions over the past two decades.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, points out in a New Year email that 1,500 fewer children are aborted every day than 25 years ago.
According to Tobias, the high-water mark for abortions in America was 1990 with an estimated 1,610,000, which works out to 4,410 abortions every day. Given the abortion rate is now 1,058,000 per year, Tobias says, “552,000 times in this New Year a woman will not have an abortion that would have occurred 25 years ago.” That works out to 1,500 fewer abortions every day.
To put this in a larger context, those 1.6 million abortions a year in 1990 came from a total U.S. population of 248 million, while the current lower rate of abortion comes from a population of 317 million.
Both sides of the abortion debate claim credit for the drop. Abortion advocates claim women are getting pregnant less due to the widespread use of contraception and the spread of sex education. Pro-lifers claim their message is getting out and that more women are choosing life.
Pro-lifers are coming off a few very good years for limiting the effectiveness of abortion clinics. A few hundred state laws have been passed in the last several years, the result of which has been the closing of a number of clinics. With the recent elections which saw even more state houses and governorships go conservative, pro-life advocates are confident that even more pro-life laws will be passed.
LifeNews reports the change in Senate control will lead to national legislation: “National Right to Life and other pro-life groups will be fighting for a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Now that pro-life lawmakers run the U.S. Senate, it will finally get a vote in that chamber.”
Follow Austin Ruse @austinruse.
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