Pro-Choice author Melody Rose put together a table with statistics on how important the abortion issue is for Republicans versus Democrats.
The author examines the voting records of Republicans and Democrats on abortion related legislation between 1994 and 2005. Mathematically, she calculates that the average party unity score (instances of Republicans voting pro-life and Democrats voting pro-choice) was 87% for Republicans and 71% for Democrats—meaning that Republicans more consistently voted pro-life than Democrats voted pro-choice. She makes the point that the Republican Party is more committed to its antiabortion stand than the Democratic Party is committed to the pro-choice platform.
Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press) 2007
Parental notification laws decrease the number of abortions in the states where they are enacted. pro-choice author Melody Rose gives the following statistics:
“The teen abortion decline coincides chronologically with the rise of parental notification and consent laws nationwide, which may have diminished the adolescent abortion rate.
She notes that between 1994 and 2000 the abortion rate of 15 to 17-year-olds decreased from 8.8 to 6.5. The rates of abortion for children under 15 decreased from 1.2 to .07.
Melody Rose “Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States” (Washington DC: CQ Press, 2007) 35 to 36
The most recent statistics from Planned Parenthood come from 2009. In 2009 Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than ever before: 332,278, 2.5% more than in the previous year. Abortion rates at Planned Parenthood have risen for the 15th straight year.
During that time, it has gone from committing 9.3 percent of all abortions in the United States to committing 27.5 percent.
Income from abortion accounts for 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual clinic income.
97.6 percent of pregnant women going to Planned Parenthood are sold abortions while less than 2.4 percent of pregnant women received non-abortion services including adoption and prenatal care
There are 340 abortions for every one adoption referral
Read some women’s testimonies of Planned Parenthood’s biased and coercive abortion counseling:
National Survey of Obstetricians/Gynecologists on Contraception and Unplanned Pregnancy: Attitudes and Practices with Regard to Abortion,” Kaiser family foundation, 1995:
“Found that two thirds of the obstetricians and gynecologists in practice in the United States, especially female doctors and those under 40, refused to do abortions under any circumstances. Few of these mentioned public pressure from antiabortion activists as a reason; most cited religious scruples or simply said they didn’t like doing the procedure. Of the one third who do perform abortions, a majority do four or fewer per month.”
Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004) 16 to 17
This means that the majority of abortions are done by a small group of doctors.
And, according to another poll:
Only 5 out of 100 obstetricians/gynecologists are now willing to perform abortions
Lawrence B Finer and Stanley K Henshaw, “Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States in 2000,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 35:1 (2003): 6 – 15
So the number has dropped dramatically between 1995 and 2003
A 1998 poll found that 58% of American women felt that the availability of abortion had hindered their relationships with men and 70% of men and women believed that legal abortion was not necessary for women to pursue various educational and career goals
Wirthlin Worldwide poll (1998), conducted for the Family Research Council, Washington DC
Candace C. Crandall “Three Decades of Empty Promises” in Erika Bachiochi. The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion” (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004)
States with Restrictions on Post-Viability Abortions
reasons states permit third trimester abortions
restrictions on post-viability abortions
It should be noted that even in states where abortion is banned in the third trimester, loopholes in the law often allow these abortions to be performed anyway. Doe V Bolton, a companion case to Roe V Wade, mandated that a woman can’t be denied a third trimester abortion if her health is endangered by the pregnancy. It then went on, however, to define health broadly to include mental and emotional health. Therefore, all woman has to do to have a third trimester abortion is convince the abortionist that her mental or emotional health would be affected by the pregnancy. However, it is significant that many states have no laws on the books at all.
parental involvement and consent laws
This graph is of parental notification laws throughout the country.
The next few graphs are about public opinion in the abortion issue.
support for various pro-life lawschart on when in pregnancy abortions are acceptable to people
chart on opinions of partial-birth abortions
chart of opinions on abortion
chart on the abortion pill, RU-48pro-life versus pro-choice, public opinion
In 2009, the pro-life community gained a majority in America for the first time since Roe versus Wade.
Here are some statistics on teen pregnancy:
chart on teen pregnancy, now and in the pastgraph of teen pregnancy rategraph of the abortion rate
when in pregnancy abortions are performed
the following graph shows how having health insurance affects the abortion rate.
here are some charts on Planned Parenthood:
Number of Planned Parenthood AbortionsPlanned Parenthood – abortions versus adoptionsShare on Facebook
“Although occasionally people do move from a pro-life to pro-choice position, they do so at far lower numbers than the other direction. According to a recent Zogby poll, “22% said they were less in favor of abortion today than they were a decade ago. About half that number said that they were more in favor of it.”
Jerry Zremski, “Attitudes Becoming More Negative on Abortion,” Buffalo News (New York) November 25, 2002 A -1
Quoted in The Cost of Choice: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion by Erika Bachiochi (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2004 pgs 114-115
Relatively few surgical abortions take place before six weeks. Some RU486 abortions do, but most abortions done in the United States are still done through surgical means.
About 60% of all abortions take place between six and eight week or earlier. Rounded: 60% of all abortions adds up to 2,400 abortions at this stage a day
20% of abortions happen in the ninth or 10th week of pregnancy. Rounded: 20% of abortions at 9-10 weeks adds up to 800
abortions a day
3,200 a week
12,800 a month
153,600 a year
It was a Friday evening, and Chad Traywick and his wife, Darda, had just returned to their Houston, Texas, home only to find themselves surrounded by swarms of police –
This page contains an excerpt from the article “Ending the 30-Year War Over Abortion.” The author is David Kupelian:
It was a Friday evening, and Chad Traywick and his wife, Darda, had just returned to their Houston, Texas, home only to find themselves surrounded by swarms of police – including the SWAT team and a van from the coroner’s office.
After police pulled the shocked couple from their truck and patted them down, Det. John Hill informed Traywick that the police wanted to search his house.
As the detective explained, a local photo-finishing store had called police to report that Traywick had apparently beheaded and mutilated newborn baby and had taken pictures of the infant. The SWAT team came in in force, prepared to arrest satanic cult members – baby killers who had carried out a ritualistic mutilation connected with some Satan-worship ceremony, and who had the further audacity to photograph their victims.
But when officers entered the house, instead of finding occult paraphernalia associated with child sacrifices, they discovered pro-life and religious posters and books.
Traywick explained to police what had really happened. Newly active in the pro-life movement, Traywick had gone to a local abortion clinic – the Women’s Pavilion – at 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon to scope out the best location for conducting a picket of the facility. Finding the building oddly deserted and the door open, he took a quick tour. After wandering through stylish, relaxing waiting areas and immaculate operating rooms, he entered a small back room filled with 15 plastic buckets with lids on. Realizing what they must contain, he snatched one of the buckets and made a fast retreat.
Enlisting the aid of his wife and a friend to videotape and photograph his opening of the container, Traywick slowly lifted out the contents from the bucket. What he found shocked him to the core. Rather than a tiny fetus as he had expected, what he pulled out appeared to be a full-grown baby, whose head and right arm had been ripped from his body and his brain removed. In his agony, the baby had bitten through his own tongue, no doubt while his head, grasped by forceps, was being literally ripped off his body. The little boy had an incision where other organs had apparently been removed – evidence that someone had sought more profit from the baby’s death than the $1,800 the abortion had cost.
Traywick drove the film to the nearest one-hour photo developer. “I explained to them that the pictures were of an aborted baby and asked if they would have any problem or felt uncomfortable developing them,” recalls Traywick.
Over the blare of the Christmas rush, the clerk hastily took the negatives and assured Traywick there would be no problem. When he returned for the developed photos, however, the clerk was obviously uncomfortable and nervous. The 35 mm photographs were so horrific that they strained the credibility of Traywick’s story, and the store’s staffer had called the police to investigate a grisly crime for which he held the evidence. Indeed, when the police saw the photos, they too were convinced a horrific crime had been committed.
After convincing police he was not a baby-killer on that 15th day of December, 1989, Traywick agreed to make a statement at police headquarters the following morning. On Jan. 20, 1990, Chad Traywick buried the aborted baby, whom he named David, after a memorial service attended by over 100 people.