National abortion rates have been falling for years now, right alongside both pregnancy and birth rates. Activists on both sides of the abortion debate are always quick to claim credit for lower abortion numbers. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the Alan Guttmacher Institute tout the proliferation of Planned Parenthood facilities, contraceptive access and sales, and their unique version of what they call ‘comprehensive sex education’ for both teens and children. Their opponents in the anti-abortion movement point instead to a surge in pro-life laws they have managed to get enacted in about half of our state capitols, their own versions of outreach and education, and the great recent advances in ultrasound technology that can now be easily viewed online.
So who’s right? Can either side prove their assertions, and take honest credit for lower national abortion numbers? Can abortion rates from one state to another provide us with a clearer picture – and winner – in this age old debate? The answer is a resounding yes, but the data comes from a very unlikely source. That is, a source that does not agree with their own data.
The ink is barely dry on the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s latest highlighted research article entitled Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2011 (dated March 1, 2014). The purpose of this research was to compare state abortion rate data (2010 and 2011, as compared to 2008) with the sudden and historic number of laws that pro-life activists have managed to get enacted in several states in the South and Midwest, as well as the slightly diminished number of operating abortion providers.
The goal, at least as stated, was to determine whether or not these new laws at the state level affected the abortion incidence rate, as well as the number of local abortion providers. These pro-life laws tend to involve safety and other regulations of abortion facilities (absent from Dr. Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors’ in Philadelphia), updating and improving informed consent requirements, parental consent involving pregnant minors, and ensuring that taxpayer funds are kept away from paying for elective abortions.
To best understand this research article, print it out and get some scissors. Cut out all of the verbiage and concentrate only on the tables and the actual data presented. Then go back and read what they had to say about their own data. You’ll discover that there are two different studies. Once you get back to the discussion and conclusions, take note of the backflips in logic and rejection of simple math that were necessary in order for the authors to refute their own research.
Remarkably, many of the states that already had some of the lowest abortion rates in the country also saw some of the steepest declines between 2008 and 2011. The national abortion rate declined 13%, but just have a look at five of the top six states that saw a drop in rates of 19% or better:
Kansas, 34.89% decline
South Dakota, 30.36% decline
Utah, 20.59% decline
Missouri, 20.63% decline
Oklahoma, 19.39% decline
35 pro life laws were enacted in those very same five states between 2008 and 2011, nearly 1/3 of the national total of 106 listed in Guttmacher’s study. If we expand the winners list even further to include the top 10 states that show the largest reductions (those whose rates fell by 18.00% or more), we add Arizona and Louisiana. Those two states enacted an additional 19 abortion related laws during the study period, all of them angering the pro-choice lobby. So while Delaware and Oregon (zero new laws) make the top ten, seven states enacting 54 (more than half) of the new laws dominate. Mississippi rounds out the top ten, and already boasts the second lowest abortion rate in the country.
So what did the AGI researchers have to say about these new pro-life laws and their effect on abortion incidence? They simply stated that “..we found no indication that they affected state-specific trends in abortion incidence..” Doubling down on completely ignoring their own data, they concluded that they had “..found no evidence that new abortion restrictions affected abortion incidence..”
Meanwhile, the number of abortion providers in the Midwest actually increased during the study period amidst a small national decline of 3.2%. This was the same region which saw the most pro-life laws enacted. The decline in abortion providers was greatest in the Northeast, where there were no new pro-life laws at all. Rachel K. Jones and Jenna Jerman, the Guttmacher researchers and authors of the article, chose not to notice this either. Here again, the scientific data did not mesh with the political message.
Whether you find this head-in-sand approach to research to be infuriating or just amusing, consider the elephant sitting in the room also. If you dare to notice the average state abortion rates published in the study covering three individual years (2008, 2010-2011), a very clear picture emerges of the state of abortion incidence in this country. And it is one that the abortion industry can only hope that nobody notices.
If indeed their unique version of sex education, abundant Planned Parenthood locations, and high contraceptive use were all that was necessary to achieve the rarity of abortion that the pro-choice lobby has long stated is their goal – then both Planned Parenthood’s home state of New York and Washington, DC should certainly be their shining beacons of success. And if this same pro-choice narrative that has remained essentially unchanged since the days when bands like Abba and The Carpenters were atop the Billboard charts, then Mississippi and its neighbors would certainly be mired in the most embarrassing and stubbornly bad numbers in the country.
Here again, we see the exact opposite of what the abortion industry’s political platform has been insisting we believe for generations now. Courtesy of Guttmacher’s own research, here are the five best and five worst annual state abortion rates per 1,000 females aged 15-44 for the years 2008, 2010, and 2011:
Best
Wyoming, 0.93
Mississippi, 4.03
South Dakota, 4.76
Kentucky, 4.80
Idaho, 5.36 *Average: 3.98 per 1,000 – per year.
Worst
Maryland, 28.67
New Jersey, 28.70
District of Columbia, 28.73
Delaware, 34.76
New York, 35.73 *Average: 31.32 per 1,000 – per year.
Abortion rates in the five best states are just about eight times lower than those found in the five cellar dwellers. Feel free to expand both lists from the top and bottom if you wish. The story remains exactly opposite of what big abortion has been telling us for decades. Places six through 15 on the winners list with the lowest abortion rates belong to Missouri (5.50), Utah (6.03), West Virginia (7.00), Wisconsin (7.26), Nebraska (7.40), South Carolina (7.40), Indiana (7.86), Arkansas (8.13), Oklahoma (8.73), and North Dakota (10.16). Clearly outraged by their success in making abortions rare, NARAL’s most recent state legislative report card awarded twelve grades of F and two grades of D- among these 15 states.
In stark contrast, the states with the highest abortion rates – bringing up the rear by exponential proportions – are exactly those who have embraced the abortion industry’s platform as a matter of routine. Although Governor Chris Christie has shaken things up in New Jersey in the last four years, most all of the leaders of the bottom five have long boasted of the highest of marks on NARAL’s report cards, and have been regularly rewarded with hefty campaign contributions. Planned Parenthood facilities are plentiful in all five of them. And this is exactly where the nation’s highest abortion rates are.
The nation’s most revolting abortion rates remain within New York City, which in spite of recent decreases still drag down the rest of the Empire State into dead last place in the country. Indeed, the corridor from DC to NYC can still be accurately described as the USA’s abortion disaster area. The next time you see a map showing Mississippi with the highest teen birth rate in the country, consider how many more healthy babies there were actually permitted to survive the trip from conception to birth. Those maps most often reflect teen birth rates, not teen pregnancy rates.
The age old policy prescriptions as postulated by of NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Guttmacher regarding how best to achieve lower abortion rates have failed miserably. The overwhelming evidence as published in Guttmacher’s own study confirms this in multiple ways. But don’t expect them to change course. They never have.
Is their publicly stated goal of lowering their own abortion sales really any more believable than the tobacco industry’s public pronouncements that their goal is get people to quit smoking? This research suggests not. And the bad news for any industry such as this one that depends a great deal on the electoral success of candidates favorable to them is easy enough to recognize. The country as they wish you to see it simply does not exist.
Sean Cannan is a longtime pro-life activist and a member of The Human Rights and Scientific Honesty Initiative. Cannan is a registered independent who holds a BA degree in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an AAS degree in Information Systems Technology from Piedmont Virginia Community College.
