Learning from the PA Abortion report for 2017

Good News again this year!

There’s good news in the most recent Pennsylvania Abortion Report for 2017. Abortion numbers for the State have fallen again: 2.8% fewer than the year before (from 30,881 to 30,011).  (All statistics come for the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health’s annual Abortion Reports. The interpretation is ours.)

Abortions to Pennsylvania residents only (as opposed to all abortions, including those performed on women from out of state) fell a little further – by 3.4% ­­(from 29,214 to 28,234). In the ten years from 2008, when abortions reached their peak, to 2017, abortion numbers for residents have fallen 24.1% in PA.

Allegheny county gets mixed reviews

​Allegheny County bucked the trend, as the number of abortions performed there went up 1% over 2016, from 6,080 to 6,140. Abortions to residents of Allegheny County, however, went down sharply – from 3,338 to 3,120, a decline of 6.5% over 2016. (The drop in abortions to residents was over-balanced by more abortions to non-residents. Some of these might be women coming from out-of-state for their abortions, but many were likely students studying here.) In the two years from 2008 to 2010, abortion numbers for Allegheny County residents declined 9% (from 4,481 to 4,079). From 2010, the year before our ad campaigns were rolling, to 2017, those numbers declined 23.5%.

But The Abortion Ratio For Residents has fallen

What’s really important, however, are abortion ratios, that is, the number of abortions per 1,000 live births. Why? Because pregnancy rates are falling anyway. From 2008 to 2017, births in Pennsylvania went down 11,310, or about 8%. In this case, the question becomes, “Are abortion numbers going down relative to declining birth numbers?” This is the abortion ratio. If the number of abortions per 1,000 live births is lower from year to year, then we know that fewer women who were pregnant chose abortion each year.

Here the news is better. Abortion ratios for Allegheny County residents dropped 4.4% from 2016 to 2017, from 252 to 241. That 241 was the highest abortion ratio for the rest of the State over that 17-year period. The larger the urban area, the bigger the abortion ratio. So the abortion ratio in 2017 for smaller Erie County in 2017 was 61, while the much bigger Philadelphia County’s was 524 (or 1 abortion for every 2 births). For Allegheny County's ratio to drop to the highest average ratio of all the other counties is an encouraging development. From 2010 to 2017, abortion ratios for Allegheny County residents dropped 23.7%. The bottom line is that we are seeing real progress in Allegheny County -- abortion numbers and ratios continue to drop.

A smaller abortion ratio means that fewer women who were pregnant chose abortion.

Abortion numbers and ratios for Allegheny County residents went down 24% since we began advertising in 2011.

What else do we learn from the PA report?

​Black women had 43% of abortions performed in PA, something that should exercise the hearts and minds of anyone who cares about the black community. As they are about 13% of the population, they are over-represented by two times in the abortion statistics. If black lives matter, then this has to change. Black pastors need to step up, and reassure women that God can and will forgive sexual sin -- the child is His good, natural gift -- and that He gives us sexual boundaries because He loves us.

88% of women who aborted in Pennsylvania in 2017 were unmarried. We know apart from the Report that women who cohabit are most at risk of abortion.

Over 61% of women who aborted had one or more previous live births. In other words, moms with one child or more were more likely than women with no children to have an abortion. It’s very likely that finances and the state of their relationships played a big part in these decisions.
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When we put this together, we get the following picture: a woman (in many cases black), between the ages of 20 to 24, cohabiting, with one or more children. We know from other research that, as a group, the women most likely to abort when they discover that they have an unintended pregnancy are those in households with 200 to 300 times the federal poverty level. Though very poor women abort, too, more often it is those for whom pregnancy has complicated their lives: the boyfriend is threatening to leave, or he has lost his job; she can’t give up her job without losing their accommodation; and so forth. The problem is not one that can be solved simply with money. These women, and all women thinking about abortion, need to hear from the people at the pregnancy medical centers that they can make it, that they don’t have to abort, that God will provide and that they can trust in Him. She already has a child within her; killing him or her is no solution.
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​Repeat abortions (a woman’s second, third, fourth or more) accounted for over 47% of the total abortions to residents.

The best news  here, however, is that first-time abortions in PA are in sharper decline than repeat abortions. From 2008 to 2017, first-time abortions declined 25%. Repeat abortions declined 20%.

What does this mean? With fewer first-time abortions each year, there will be even fewer repeat abortions in future, if the trends hold, which they should. This means that Big Abortion is facing a slow demise. When the number of clients showing up for abortions drops below a certain threshold, profitability is gone, and the abortionist has to shut down. That’s the future!

Many pro-life organizations make much of the evil of abortion, and there is no question that it is evil. But outrage and anger accomplish little, and there is much to encourage us: abortion numbers are falling, and they'll continue to fall. Advertising pregnancy help centers help them to fall faster, and that's our goal for the year ahead. We need to get the word out across America. We want to see more moms and babies saved from abortion in Allegheny County, in Pennsylvania, and in the U.S. May God help us as we do our best.

Chris Humphrey
Executive Director