DCRepublican.com

Thu 17 Jan 2008

Today’s Washington Post had an interesting article discussing the declines in abortion since 1976. According to their data, in 2005 there were approximately 1,200,000 abortions in the United States.

While 1,200,000 is a 9% decline from the 2000 numbers, the article seems to be missing the obvious in terms of what might have caused this drop.

In the article, Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute was quoted on some of the things that she thought were responsible for this decline:

“It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies. It could be more restrictions on abortions making it more difficult for women to obtain abortion services. It could be a combination of these and other dynamics”

I’m going to have to agree with Ms. Jones. More women are using contraception and because of a strong pressure on State governments, it is becoming more and more difficult for women to get abortions. Case closed, right? Not so far..

Just like any other story regarding abortion, there is always the Planned Parenthood angle. Normally, its Planned Parenthood interjects in debates by suggesting that the tight restrictions on abortion need to be lifted, but not this time.

In the article in the Post, they quoted Cecile Richard from Planned Parenthood, who stated:

“This study shows that prevention works, and that’s what we provide in our health centers every day”

How is that for spinning something in your favor? The study they are referring to in the article can be summed up by the earlier quote from Rachel Jones who released the study: tighter restrictions and preventative measures are responsible for the decline in abortions.

I find this amusing, because Planned Parenthood is the organization that continually touts that if restrictions aren’t lifted, there will be more abortions in less humane fashions.

I think that if this were the case, it would have been reported in the article.

All of this on the brink of the anniversary of Roe. v. Wade.

On a side note, if you haven’t already, I encourage you all to see the movie Juno. While its not explicitly pro-life, I think that it has many pro-life tones, without the common stereotypes.