Pro-abortion researchers from the Guttmacher Institute are pleased to see abortion numbers up from 2017 to 2020, as it indicates (to them) that more women are exercising "bodily autonomy." Of course, this ignores the bodily integrity of the child who is killed in an abortion, but they don't go anywhere near those thoughts.
The numbers went up among women 25 and older by 11%. This isn't good news, but it does suggest that the numbers for all abortions will eventually go down. Younger women are having fewer abortions. Women under 20 had only 8.5% of all abortions in 2020. It is likely that a significant proportion of women who did not have abortions when they were younger will not have them when they get older, too. More babies will live.
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58% Increase in births in Pittsburgh!The PA Abortion Report for 2021 has just come out, but the most astonishing thing about that year is found in the preliminary birth reports on the PA Department of Health’s site: We learn that there was a 58% increase in births in Allegheny County over 2020! In raw numbers, more than 7,000 more babies were born in 2021 than in 2020. This is so unprecedented, that it looks like it must be a mistake. This is from the “preliminary” Health Department report, but in previous years the difference between the preliminary and final report has been negligible. There is nothing to indicate that the numbers are a mistake. Could this number include women from elsewhere? No, these women were residents of the County. Could it reflect an increase of immigrants in the County? Hispanic mothers were 13% of the State’s total (the same as 2020’s proportion), which would hardly explain an increase in births in Allegheny County of 58%. On a personal note: my daughter recently had her baby at Magee Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh, and they told her to be ready at any time, including throughout the night, to come in for induction. This was different from her previous pregnancies, when scheduled births were only during the day. Does this reflect this higher birthing caseload? It would make sense. So Allegheny County had more births than Philadelphia County in 2021! I have looked back as far as 1990 for Allegheny County birth numbers, and none of them top this. The Health Department’s analysis of Allegheny County’s health stats show that, for 2016 to 2020, the “General fertility rate - ages 15 to 44” was lower than Pennsylvania’s as a whole. The birth number for 2021 is either a gross mistake, missed by the people who draw up the reports, or it is reason for demographers and statisticians to investigate and tell us what is going on. And now on abortion . . .Unfortunately, there was an increase in abortion numbers in the County in 2021, too, though this increase was not great. The high number of births, however, has sent the ratios of abortions to births down 29%! (If births go up, but abortion numbers are relatively stable, the ratio of the latter to the former goes down.) The rest of the State (besides Allegheny and Philadelphia counties) had a smaller increase in births, but nothing so dramatic as that in PA’s second-largest city. A Little good news in philadelphiaIn Philadelphia County, where abortion numbers are about 40% of all of Pennsylvania’s, that number dropped slightly from 2020 to 2021 – from 11,301 to 11,216, or less than 1%. Philadelphia’s numbers fell, but because the County’s birth numbers fell by about 11%, as we saw above, the ratio of abortions climbed sharply to 632 per thousand births. The slight decrease in abortion numbers in Philadelphia County is still good news, because the rest of the State, apart from Philly and Allegheny County, saw an increase in both numbers and ratios. ![]() One last chart: Around half of the abortions in Allegheny County are to people who don't live in the County (non-resident abortions). In the last few years, that number has been going up. Does this mean we should see higher abortion numbers for residents in neighboring counties? I haven't looked at that yet. Does it mean an increase in women coming from Ohio? Perhaps. The chart below shows the total number of abortions broken down by residency (within or outside Allegheny County). ConclusionsWhat do we learn from these statistics? That abortion numbers in Allegheny County rose 11.4%, while birth numbers increased 58%, is actually encouraging. Why? Because, while every death in an abortion is a terrible thing, we have to look at the big picture and be encouraged by what we can get: fewer deaths are simply better than more. With that high number of total pregnancies in the County, we would have expected about 4,867 abortions (using the 2020 abortion ratio of 253 per thousand); instead, it was 3,437. In other words, the abortion number was about 40% lower than we would expect, given that birth number. That difference means about 1,400 lives.
Philadelphia County's abortion numbers actually fell from 2020 to 2021, while the average numbers for the rest of PA (excluding Allegheny County, too) went up -- both raw numbers and abortion ratios. Could it be that pro-life advertising by Vision for Life and others in the County are having an effect? It is difficult to say, on the evidence of the State's statistics. We began advertising in the County in 2017. Abortion numbers have declined slightly since 2019, but hardly dramatically enough to justify a claim that our advertising did it. Again, however, we can look on the bright side: those numbers are still falling; fewer abortions means more children live to see the light of day. Assuming that the birth numbers for Allegheny are correct, we are likely to see a high number of births for at least a few years to come -- a "baby boom." People who see other people like them with children will be inclined to imitate them. (We see the same phenomenon with the "social contagion" of transgenderism in high schools, or the fact that people who hang out with overweight people will tend to become overweight themselves.) As noted above, statisticians and demographers should be intrigued by this development, and their research should help us understand how it is that Allegheny County could stand out in this way. Advertising pro-life pregnancy medical centers is still the best way to reduce abortion numbers, and ratios of abortions to births, right now. What we see in the numbers is encouraging, and good reason for donors to support our work advertising centers in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. In a future post, I will look at what is happening in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, where we have begun advertising using Facebook and Google Ads. Please pray for the success of our work, that many more moms will be grateful that they did the right thing. In my last blog post, I showed how Facebook often rejects our ads for pregnancy medical centers, and then, on appeal, reverses its decision. That has been true for Pittsburgh for years, and also for Cleveland, and it used to be true for Philadelphia, but no longer. July 10, Facebook “restricted” our advertising. At first I was told that it would be resolved in 24 hours. Then it was 48. I was told that the “internal team” was conducting an investigation. At the end of August, I was informed that Facebook needed to establish my identity. Why did it take them more than 6 weeks to get around to asking me for credentials? Why did Facebook – Pittsburgh have no problem with my identity, or Facebook – Cleveland? I had already sent Facebook - Philadelphia photos of my driver’s license (both sides). So I did it again, and started the online identity questionnaire. The questionnaire abruptly stopped and I was informed that I had to get a notarized statement confirming my identity. Uh huh. "Losing the file"I am familiar with bureaucracies, having worked for the Canadian federal government, and having had to deal with large corporations for one reason or another over the years. This delay is what is known in the business as “losing the file.” Facebook itself is not pro-abortion, officially: there are pages for the abortion pill, but there are many pro-life pages. And of course, Facebook in Pittsburgh and in Cleveland happily lets our ads run. (Currently we’re running ads for abortion-pill reversal.) You could say that Facebook is “pro-choice.” It doesn’t seem to be difficult, however, for a Facebook employee, or for several employees together, to curtail pro-life activity unofficially, to “lose the file” and prevent advertising that saves lives. That’s not pro-choice: that’s pro-abortion. In our current environment, where women can get an abortion for any reason up until 24 weeks (Pennsylvania), it is pregnancy help centers that are truly “pro-choice.” Women who come to the centers commonly complain that they have “no choice but abortion.” The centers present women with alternatives: they give factual information on abortion, but they also give women information on adoption and on what is involved in keeping their babies. Plus, of course, they give practical help and moral support if a woman chooses to carry her baby to term. The general public, polls show, loves pregnancy help. These Facebook employees don’t want women to have alternatives: they don’t care what might be driving women to seek an abortion. They don’t want any solution to the women’s problems but abortion. Why would that be? A personal involvement in abortion, and a guilty conscience expressing itself in hostility? Perhaps. An ideological or anti-religious opposition to pregnancy help, and the Christians who are involved in this ministry? Maybe. An unthinking acceptance of others’ pro-abortion propaganda, and a desire to frustrate those working for “fake clinics”? Who knows? google is succumbing, tooGoogle won’t run ads for the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (see Abortion Pill Reversal - Home). Abortion-pill reversal works: over 3,000 women have had their babies with no harm to the children. The reversal protocol is pretty simple: a woman calls the Abortion Pill Reversal number (1-877-558-0333) after she has taken the first abortion pill, but before she has taken the second. She is connected with a physician, who sends a prescription for progesterone to a pharmacy near her. She fills the prescription, and follows the instructions for taking it. She goes as soon as she can to the closest pregnancy medical center, where she gets an ultrasound to establish fetal viability. In an early study, abortion-pill reversal was successful over 64% of the time. Progesterone is not an untested drug. Progesterone is used commonly to prevent miscarriage. Some people at Heartbeat International, an association of pregnancy help centers, have worn T-shirts that say, “It’s just progesterone.” Ideological hostility would have you believe otherwise. At a recent meeting of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians-Gynecologists, Joy Stockbauer noted, participants discussed “the utter denial by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) that abortion pill reversal is safe and successful. ACOG is not neutral on abortion pill reversal – it actively fights against informing women about this safe and natural treatment that could allow them to change their minds after beginning a chemical abortion.” Google is quite happy to accept the conclusion of the pro-abortion organization over the mounting evidence in its favor. Half of the abortions in America today involve the abortion pill, and that proportion is likely to increase as it is less expensive than a surgical abortion, and abortion-pill providers can get around state laws to sell them. Ads for abortion-pill reversal are likely more effective than any other kind, as they tell any woman thinking about abortion that she’s not alone, that other women have had doubts, too, that people are ready to help her face her unexpected pregnancy, and that, if she has made the mistake of taking that first pill, she might be able to keep her pregnancy. Those abortion-pill dangers are real. When women search for terms like abortion pill, Google won’t show pregnancy medical centers in the search results. Planned Parenthood and its peers don’t really provide options; they have been shown to push women towards abortion, maximizing their anxiety about having a child and minimizing the dangers of the abortion pill. (Those dangers are real, e.g., “Chemical abortion is consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion E[mergency] R[oom] visit morbidity than surgical abortion. There is also a distinct trend of a growing number of women miscoded as receiving treatment for spontaneous abortion in the ER following a chemical abortion,” from a study cited on the Charlotte Lozier Institutes’ page on abortion-pill dangers, Public Health Threat: New York Data Shows Significant Increase in Risky Abortion Method - Charlotte Lozier Institute). It is becoming challenging to advertise in this environment. It is definitely counter-cultural. It is still possible. While Google is deliberately limiting pregnancy help results in its “organic” search results, it still accepts paid advertising, “Google Ads,” and we are running those in all three cities. Facebook’s censorship of ads seems to be selective, depending on our area. Our friends at Lamar Advertising have been advertising Vision for Life in Pittsburgh, and billboards, especially the electronic kind, may become a bigger part of our work. We’re in the right on this issue, and so any challenge is worth taking on. We will continue to reach out to women, to offer what’s best for them and their babies. Is It Time to Pivot to Older Abortion Patients? If you read my blog article on the trends in the ages of abortion patients, you’ll know that 63% of abortion patients in the U.S. in 2019 were 25 or older. That wasn’t the case in 1973, when only 35% of abortion patients were over 24. Pregnancy help has reached the younger women and changed the proportions. Yet most pregnancy help centers are still pursuing the scared teenager (now only 9% of abortion patients), or the woman in her early 20s (28% of abortion patients). I think it’s because the women in pregnancy help find it easy to fall into a motherly role with younger women, and younger women are often willing to have a mother-figure help them decide what’s best for them. Fewer than 1 in 10 abortion patients is a teenager. Many women say that their pregnancy is “mis-timed”: they’re too young, or they’re not ready financially or relationally to have children. Sometimes older women will say it’s mis-timed, too, if they think that they will have a child or children later. Women will say that a pregnancy is “unwanted,” period, if they don’t want any children. Sixty percent of abortion patients in Pennsylvania have already had at least one child. These are often women who feel they can’t handle any more children, for financial reasons or because of problems in their relationships with their partners. Forty-seven percent of abortion patients in Pennsylvania have had one or more abortions already. Marketers are not addressing 63% of would-be abortion patients From what I have seen, our friends in pro-life marketing (in no particular order: Choose Life Marketing, Cornerstone Marketing Strategies, ALIGNN, Stories Marketing, Lilianna Grace Media, among others) are marketing their services to the inexperienced in the 15–24-year-old group, facing their first unexpected pregnancies. Their social media ads are not addressing the 63% of would-be abortion patients who are older, and who may already be mothers, or may have had abortions. From the start, our Facebook/Instagram ads have been realistic, even gritty, presenting the challenges facing women with an unexpected pregnancy, and the offer of information, help, and hope from the pregnancy medical centers. (I think that’s part of the reason Facebook has rejected the ads at first, and then accepted them. Thirty-two percent of Facebook’s and Instagram’s users are 25–35 years old, their biggest age groups.) In some of our two-minute stories, the woman is already a mother, or her boyfriend is abusive or controlling, or her last abortion didn’t do anything for her, either. Realism may not make friends for us instantly, but some women immediately recognize honesty, and some, I’m persuaded, will look back and see that we told them the truth, while others like Planned Parenthood simply flattered them to seduce them. So with our direct, realistic social media ads, we’ve taken the long view, while telling women where they can get help right away, if they want it. Time for some "A-B testing" with the older audience Our pro-life marketing friends need to start A-B testing with ads aimed at older women. (A-B advertising tests run similar ads with different messaging or creative content, colors, ethnic actors, etc., to discover which are most effective.) As half of abortions are chemical now, they also need to advertise Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Rescue Network. If we can reach older women as successfully as we have the younger ones, we’ll bring down the abortion numbers even faster. Our Ads are regularly rejectedMany conservatives, social and political, claim that Big Tech is hostile to pro-life views. And it's probably true, overall. Google won't let Heartbeat International (an association of over 3,000 pregnancy help centers) run ads for abortion pill reversal (https://reverseabortionpill.com/). And now Facebook has closed down their abortion pill reversal Facebook page. We are used to rejection at Vision for Life. We have advertised using still-image ads and video ads since 2014. It is quite common for our video ads these days to be rejected. This month they were rejected, the rejections appealed, and the appeals accepted. Then somebody at Facebook put restrictions on our Philadelphia Choices page (https://www.facebook.com/Philadelphia-Choices-1795645007341892). We almost always win in the end. I thought you might like to have an idea of how things go when we're appealing our rejections. You might be surprised. Hi Chris , Thank you for contacting Meta Pro Team. My name is Madhav. Your case ID is 10076855766*****. I can see that you are contacting us with regards to ad approval, Am I correct? Facebook Business Support How are you doing today! Facebook Business Support If you could help us with the ad account Id as well so that we can look into that and assist you with the same. You sent I'm doing well, thank you. Yes, I'm contacting you about rejected ads. In my initial statement, I included the ad set number. It's for Philadephia Choices. I'm going to try to find the ad account ID now. Facebook Business Support Thank you really appreciate that also would like to know the page URL/page ID attached with the Ad so that can see if there is any restriction on the page. You sent https://www.facebook.com/Philadelphia-Choices Philadelphia Choices Community Facebook Business Support I have checked your Page status and I can see it has restricted and may I know have submitted the appeal for that. Facebook Business Support No Intend to rush you Chris, are we connected? You sent The usual pattern with rejections of ads is that you pass on my appeal of the rejection to the internal team. Here is some supporting material that show that the ad treats abortion regret credibly. https://www.abortionchangesyou.com/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6161227/ A pro-abortion censor at Facebook has rejected this ad, despite the fact that an earlier appeal of its rejection was accepted. After Abortion Emotional Healing & Care You sent This appeal applies to ads for July for AlphaCare and The Hope Pregnancy Center. Facebook Business Support Chris - I completely understand what you are talking about in regards to the ad however the problem now is not with the ad. The problem is with the page for which you are running the ads now, as there are certain restrictions in your page you have to clear and appeal all those restriction so that you can advertise for that page again and run successful ads. You sent What restrictions are these? Facebook Business Support The restriction for the page to advertise again. You sent Again, it appears that this is pro-abortion obstruction by people at Facebook. This is a policy issue for those higher up in Facebook to address: will it treat advertisers fairly, or will it only allow abortion-pill promoters to advertise? You sent My question about the restriction is this: On what grounds is it restricted? You sent What can be done to remove the restriction? Facebook Business Support Please stay connected for 1 to 2 minutes let me see what best can be done, also in the mean while please fill up your page link in the below Page Policy Appeals form https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/2992968173**** This goes directly to the experts. You sent Thank you. You sent Done. Facebook Business Support Fantastic! I have tried to expedite the process by putting all the high priority notes in your case so they will directly get back to you through your support inbox or your email address updated on the Facebook, as being an advertiser myself I can relate to your situation. You sent Thank you for your resourcefulness, it's very much appreciated. Facebook Business Support I have already resolved your problem and I need your support because as a team we can solve this with collective efforts. Your page will be enabled if there is nothing wrong. It will get done in next 24 hours. You sent Good! You sent Thanks again. Facebook Business Support Thank you really appreciate that! Please be positive. I am feeling very positive, as I have got the team working for you now. Facebook Business Support You are welcome, Chris. You sent Great! Facebook Business Support Anything else, apart from this that needs my attention to? You sent No thanks, nothing I can think of. Have a good day. [I closed the chat at my end.] Facebook Business Support Thank you, That means a lot to me. You are a nice advertiser with us and deserve special attention. Facebook Business Support You too have a wonderful day! Facebook Business Support If this is all, let me quickly sum up the chat as below: To sum up, you contacted us for your restricted ad and page I checked and instructions on the form to fill that I shared with your. Since you have submitted the form, the team shall get back to you with a decision post review and may also ask an ID. Please keep checking for email or notifications sent by them. Although I do not have the authority to directly return the account, I have shared the best and authentic information to help you in the situation. Has my information resolved your issue? Facebook Business Support You may receive a survey shortly and we would like you to help us improve by taking a few seconds to tell us about your experience chatting with us. Facebook Business Support Thanks again, take great care of the nice human being in you. Facebook Business Support Thank you for contacting Meta Pro Team and have a great day! . . . [I responded to the Facebook service survey.] What made handling your issue with Meta Support Pros easy or difficult? Please be as descriptive as possible. You sent He was clearly keen to solve my problem, which I think stems from hostility from some people at Facebook to pro-life pregnancy help. Earlier this month my ads were rejected, though they had run before. The appeal was successful. Restrictions on our Philadelphia Choices page, as far as I can tell, were unwarranted and malicious. I am glad that Facebook has the internal checks and balances to treat us fairly. We'll find out tomorrow if Facebook has done the right thing. Pregnancy Help and Advertisers Need to Broaden Their Focus to Older WomenWe have been very successful serving younger women. Now we need to reach out to their older peers. Summary
A few years back, the executive director of a local pregnancy help center observed that more clients were not just “abortion-vulnerable,” that is, just thinking about abortion; instead, they were “abortion-determined.” They weren’t calling up with questions about pregnancy and abortion, but asking how much an abortion would cost. They had made up their minds. They were just shopping. Now some of this could be the result of changing mores, new attitudes to sex and relationships, or a changing sense among these young women of how one has to act in “the real world.” A bigger part of the answer, however, is a change in the demographics: more of the women seeking an abortion are older. Let’s take a look at abortion numbers over the long term, to see the trend. The most striking change since 1973, perhaps, is how the percentage of young abortion patients has gone down: those under 20 years old (the yellow bars) dropped from 33% then, to 9% in 2019 – a 73% decline. Look at the difference, however, in percentage of patients who were over 24 from 36% to 63% (the blue bars). That’s an increase of 80%. Put this data together with the decline in the rates of abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age over the same period, and it is clear: not only are younger women a smaller group of all those having abortions; they are a smaller group of all women their age. The following chart shows the pattern clearly: the trend lines showing the proportion of those women 15–19 and 20–24 who are having abortions go down (the orange and gray lines). The trend lines for abortions among women 25–29 and 30–34 rise slightly (the yellow and blue lines). Why are younger women having fewer abortions? The proportion of those using contraceptives has increased somewhat from 2010.[1] Adolescents, however, are also less sexually active than in the past. In 1991, 54% of high school students had had sex; in 2019 that number was 38.4.[2] Many observers have seen a decrease in sexual activity generally, though it is most observable in younger women. A variety of reasons are given to explain it.[3] The result, of course, is fewer pregnancies that lead either to birth or abortion. Is it possible that the morning-after pill (“Plan B”) has played a role here? This is unlikely, as the declining abortion ratios began well before the widespread availability of the morning-after pill, and continued at the same rate after its availability. The relatively sexually and contraceptively inexperienced young woman, if anything, would be less likely to resort to it than her older peer. Women 15–24 gradually became a smaller proportion of all age groups having abortions. They also became a smaller group of all those their age who were pregnant. For those 15–19, those ratios per thousand births dropped over 50% from 1985 to 2007; for those 20–24, they dropped 29%. The decline for those 25–29 was 16%.[4] Could it be that the cohort of women who were open to abortion years ago were just getting older and were still open to abortion, while younger women were less so? Changing practical attitudes to abortion may play a role, but the age trends are lasting much longer than the reproductive years of any given cohort. Something else is happening here.[5] Abortion ratios are the best measurement of factors affecting the pregnancy decision. When the proportion of pregnant women choosing life goes up, one naturally looks for a cause. The most obvious cause of reduced abortion ratios across the country is the increase in pregnancy help centers and the advertising of them. Abortion numbers began falling in the mid-1980s, just as the number of pregnancy help centers began increasing sharply. The abortion numbers have continued to fall steadily to the present, as more centers go up and as advertising for those centers becomes more widespread. Has pregnancy help had an outsized effect upon adolescents and younger women? It is almost certainly so. When they become pregnant, younger women are more likely to be unsure of whether they are. When they have confirmation that they are pregnant, they are more likely to be uncertain of their next step, or of what they really want. They are more likely to be ambivalent about abortion, and find decision-making challenging. This is reflected in the fact that younger women have a lower proportion of early abortions than older women, and a higher proportion of later abortions. We can see this in the gestational ages at which most abortions are performed: 9 weeks or under. In the chart below, showing CDC data from 2019, notice that about 36% of aborting women 15–19 had their abortions at 6 weeks or less. Of those women a little older, 20–24, 41% had abortions within the same period. If you follow the six-weeks-and-under line (blue) to the right, you see that the older a woman was, the more likely it was that she had an abortion early in pregnancy. The blue line (abortions performed at 6 weeks gestation and under) shows that 15-19-year-olds were a minority of those having abortions at that stage (36%). More of them (38%) waited until 7-9 weeks gestation to abort (the first point on the orange line). The rising blue line shows that the older women were, the more likely it was that they had their abortions earlier in pregnancy. The declining lines for 7-9 weeks gestation (orange), for 10–13 weeks gestation (gray), and, for 14-15 weeks (yellow) show similarly that the younger women waited longer to have their abortions. So it appears that younger women are more uncertain and ambivalent regarding abortion than those a few years older. It is no surprise that more younger women who have an opportunity to find support, have increasingly turned away from abortion over the years than older women. It is also no surprise that, as abortion numbers have gone down, our success with younger women means that other, older clients seem more “abortion-determined” than ever. Pregnancy help centers are staffed, in many cases, with older women who serve as advisors or mentors for women whose family situations make such mentors invaluable. These older women are effectively surrogate “moms,” taking the right amount of interest in the well-being of their clients, while respecting the freedom of these adult “children” to make their own decisions. These “moms” care, and inasmuch as their clients get to know them, their clients know that they care. It is this, and the information, practical advice, and moral and spiritual support that they provide, that has had the effects we see in my first two charts: younger women, women more ready to accept those falling into a “mom” role, are less likely to abort than those over 24. The result, however, is that the women that pregnancy help centers have to reach are more and more “determined.” That is, they are more experienced, and less impulsive (something that both males and females face, as the brain matures in the twenties[6]). They are surer of themselves, and perhaps more cynical as a result of their experiences. About 60% are moms already, and over 40% have had one abortion or more before. From about 2015 on, ratios of abortions to births for 15–19-year-olds began to climb again. The same was true for those 20–24, though the increase was smaller. Pregnancy help centers cannot ignore this group of pregnant young women, for whom they have done and can do so much, and despite the fact that this group has become smaller. Without ceasing to appeal to those under 25 (aiming at the high schools and colleges, and so forth), pregnancy help centers would do well to reach out to older women, who in many cases face more complicated situations than their younger peers. Despite the challenges, many still respond if they are given the opportunity. Chris Humphrey, Ph.D. Co-Founder, Vision for Life www.visionforlifepgh.org [1] “In terms of overall trends in contraceptive use between 2008 and 2014, there was no significant change in the proportion of women who used a method among either all women (60%) or those at risk of unintended pregnancy (90%)” (Megan L.Kavanaugh, Jenna Jerman, “Contraceptive method use in the United States: trends and characteristics between 2008, 2012 and 2014,” in Contraception, Volume 97, Issue 1, January 2018, pp. 14-21, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001078241730478X).
[2] Kate Julian, “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?” The Atlantic, December 2018 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/); CDC, Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary and Trends Report, 2009–2019, p. 12 (https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/YRBSDataSummaryTrendsReport2019-508.pdf). [3] Julian, op. cit. [4] Calculations were made using “Table 12 (page 1 of 2). Legal abortions and legal abortion ratios, by selected patient characteristics: United States, selected years 1973–2007,” from the 2011 CDC Abortion Surveillance Report (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/012.pdf). [5] I am indebted to my fellow Heartbeat International Board member Gary Thorne for this observation, and to Jor-El Godsey, President of Heartbeat, for helpful suggestions. [6] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know Someone has leaked a draft of the upcoming Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, apparently written in February, that had to do with state restrictions of abortion. If the final decision is not significantly revised, the Supreme Court will finally have overturned Roe v. Wade.
Pro-life people are ecstatic, and with good reason. The Court, we hear, will return the matter to the states' legislatures. The decision, then, may not change abortion practice that much: red states will tend to have few or no legal abortions, and blue states will likely have slightly more. It will lead to a significant, though not likely massive, reduction in abortion numbers, however, as many people will not cross state lines to get the abortions that were available at home. (The Texas "heartbeat law," which prevents abortions after a heartbeat can be detected, has reduced abortion numbers 50 - 60%, though some women have gone to neighboring states for abortions. While abortion drugs are readily available online, many women will not break the law. The President of Heartbeat International, an association of pregnancy help centers, has observed that some women in Texas have expressed gratitude that they didn't have the choice to abort -- which points to the pressures on women to do what they really don't want.) Let's look further down the road: the Supreme Court is just putting off a decision that should apply to all the states, and not be left to them individually. (I think we can assume that Congress will not have the courage and fortitude to deal with the issue head on, though it should.) While the Court may be politically attuned (or cautious), the inner logic of any moral prohibition of abortion demands a Court ruling, if you have any law, anywhere, protecting the child from the abortionist. If what is in the womb has the moral status of an appendix, then the law should back off and let medical professionals decide about abortion. If the moral status of that which is in the womb is unknown, but possibly that of a human being, the courts have an obligation to defend what may be a person, another one of us. (In short, those for permitting abortion have to show that that a pregnancy does not involve an individual human being. The hunter can't just shoot at anything that moves in the forest. He has to know that it's not another hunter.) Attempts to say when in pregnancy the state has "a compelling interest" to forbid abortion, on the grounds that the child should be protected at that stage, are in reality arbitrary: e.g., why 6 months (Roe), and not 5 months, or 4 months, when a life is on the line? A legal person inside another legal person is a challenge to the imagination, especially early in pregnancy. It is also a challenge, admittedly, to the legal tradition, but it is perhaps an inevitable development, and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment will eventually apply, at least to the question of taking the child's life. Compare our fight to the history of other issues before the Court, like race. From Wikipedia on the "equal protection clause": "The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides 'nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' . . . "A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War." States surrendered their decision-making power as the Court saw the 14th Amendment entailing more uniform treatment of white and black peoples in more and more areas of life (accommodation, housing, education, etc. (https://historycollection.com/5-us-supreme-court-cases-defined-race/4/). The Court, I submit, will eventually have to deal with the issue at the federal level; it can only be politics that holds it back at this point. A good day. Let's hope and pray that the Court will stand firm. Chris Humphrey, Ph.D. The Good News, Obvious and Hidden, in the PA Health Department’s Abortion Report for 2020 |
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AuthorChris Humphrey has been involved in pro-life activity of one kind or another since the late 1970s, when he first looked at the subject of abortion in seminary in Canada. He has an undergraduate degree in English (University of Toronto), and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in religious studies (McGill). He has had a varied career as a pastor, chaplain in a psychiatric hospital, editor of academic and instructional publications, semi-professional photographer, and home renovator. He is a husband of over 45 years to Edith (a Professor of New Testament), father to three girls, and grandfather to seventeen grandchildren. He lives and works in the Stanton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Archives
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