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The Guttmacher Institute, formerly an affiliate of Planned Parenthood (PP), released a report showing the surgical abortion rate dipping to 1.2 million in 2005, or 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women. The proportion of pregnancies ending in abortion also fell from 24.5 percent in 2002 to 22.4 percent in 2005 — a 9 percent drop from a high of 30.4 in 1983.

The new report does not explain the downward trend. Over a million babies aborted is still a staggering number, so it’s puzzling when both abortion opponents and abortion advocates welcome the trend. Surely there are some factors that need to be examined in order to shed light on the slightly downward trend.

Randall K. O’Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee said: "It’s still a massive number, but it’s moving in the right direction," and added that the drop may be the result of changing attitudes. He thinks more women are choosing to go forward with pregnancies because they are better informed about abortion, attributing 4-D ultrasound pictures as a stimulus for women choosing life. "There’s been a lot of pro-life education and outreach, and a lot of people out there providing women with positive alternatives to abortion," he says. But can saving babies one at a time really be much of a contributing factor?

Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute said: "We just aren’t able to get at the reasons behind the decline. But she suggested that perhaps, "It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies." Better insight was offered by Suzanne T. Poppema of pro-abortion group Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH), who said that wider availability of the morning-after pill might be a contributing factor. Ah, now we have it.

Emergency contraceptive drugs called "morning-after pills," or RU486, introduced in the United States in 1999 and made available over the counter in 2006, would certainly tip the scales in favor of chemical abortion, thereby avoiding the surgical abortions that are the only statistics in the report. These drugs are touted as emergency contraceptives, but are really abortions in a bottle. The act was committed, the child conceived, and the drugs simply expedite the death and expulsion of the fertilized human embryo.

Most commonly known as Plan B, maker Barr Pharmaceuticals says it sold $40 million worth of the drug in 2006 alone, with expectations of doubling that in 2007. The drug is available from some physicians, clinics, ER’s, college nursing stations, surgical abortion centers, and over the counter, so exact numbers of women who have taken the drug cannot be estimated accurately.

Another reason for the decrease in surgical abortions may also be the increase in availability and use of birth control methods in general. Speaking of new low-dose pills, Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, noted: "Because of the lower levels of hormones, more women are physically able to take them." Of course, the pills are now readily available to women of all ages, even teens and young adults. The Center for Disease Control reported contraceptive use among teens skyrocketed between 1995 and 2005, certainly a sign of how promiscuous American teens have become, and also how morally and socially acceptable fornication is these days.

This is an important if unrecognized trend. None of the reported statistics even take into account the abortifacient aspects of birth control methods on the market today. If the Guttmacher Institute were truly interested in honest and balanced statistical evidence, they would have to include chemical abortion numbers in their abortion totals which would put the numbers far higher than ever before in history.

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