“It was found that women in states with Medicaid funding for abortion have an abortion rate 3.9 times higher than women who aren’t covered…”
Rachel M MacNair, PhD. Achieving Peace in the Abortion War (New York: iUniverse, 2009) 140
This proves that in states where abortion is not covered by health insurance, there are fewer abortions. Perhaps the extra time that poor women need to get the money together for an abortion allows them to reflect on their situation and change their minds.
Planned Parenthood tabulated 745,440 legal abortions in 1973. They claim there was a need for 1,258,000 to 1,745,000 in 1973 to 1974. They also claim there were only 17,000 illegal abortions. This translates to the statistic that only 1.6% of the women with unwanted pregnancies will get an abortion if abortion is illegal
Christopher Tietze et.al. “How Much of the Need Was Met in 1973” in “Provisional Estimates of Abortion Need and Services in the Years Following the 1973 Supreme Court Decisions, United States, Each State and Metropolitan Area” a report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, PPFA, P. 31 to 36
One common contention among pro-choice activists is that pro-lifers only care about unborn babies and not about adults or born children. While some pro-lifers focus on abortion because they see it as the greatest human rights injustice of our time, the killing of innocent babies, many of them are active and other causes. For example, here is one survey of members of Indiana Right to Life.
Out of 229 members of Indiana Right to Life:
81 distributed food and clothing
Nearly ¼ donated blood regularly
37 worked in support groups (drugs, alcohol, Suicide)
17 worked in programs for abused women
28 worked in hospitals, clinics, and hospices
116 worked in scouting, youth work, and meals on wheels
176 worked in schools, tutoring, aiding teachers
67 worked in voter registration
75 worked distributing maternity and infant clothing
47 have shared their home with foster children, elderly refugees, pregnant strangers, or the sick
Ruth Ann Hanley “Do Right to Lifers Care Only About the Unborn?” editorial, The Communicator (Indiana Right to Life newsletter) 5 no. 5 (June 1980) As quoted in James T. Burtchaell “Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion” (San Francisco: Harper and Row 1982) 129
pro-lifers are also dedicated to saving babies like this oneShare on Facebook
In 2005 the woman’s magazine Glamour ran a story that noted that a 2003 CBS/New York Times poll found that 35% of young women thought that abortion should be available to anyone who wants it (18 – 29) 50% of the women of 1993 thought that
Alexander Sanger of Planned Parenthood:
“I’ve seen the numbers and I find them unbelievably shocking. Isn’t it obvious that young women have to be on the forefront of fighting for their reproductive rights because they’re the ones who need them?”
Susan Dominus “The Mysterious Disappearance of Young Pro-Choice Women” Glamour, August 2005 P 200 – 201
Quoted in Ramesh Ponnauru The Party of Death (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006) 212
“The answer is that parental involvement laws to reduce teen abortion rates, by as much as 25% (Texas) and over 33% (Virginia and South Dakota)”
US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, Signs of Hope in 2006, “Signs of Hope in 2006” Life Insight volume 17, March – April 2006
“After Washington state began to provide public funding for abortions in 1970, the breast cancer rate among the poor rose by 53%, while the rate for rich women dropped by 1%.”
Mona Charen, Conservative Chronicle, November 2, 1994
Perhaps this rise in breast cancer correlating with the greater availability of abortion is more evidence that abortion raises the risk of this type of cancer.
If Roe save women from deaths in legal abortions, the effect was too small to have any noticeable effect on the death rate for women:
“Centers for Disease Control statistics show no decline in the years after Roe in the death rate of women aged 15 to 34, the group of women who account for 94% of all abortions.”
Candace Crandall, “The Fetus Beat Us” the Woman’s Quarterly, Winter 1996, P 20 quoted in
Ramesh Ponnauru The Party of Death (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006) 74
Abortion researcher David Reardon on whether women would seek abortions if they were illegal:
“Given their doubts about the morality of abortion, most aborting women are strongly influenced by the legal status of the abortion option. When asked “Did the knowledge that abortion was legal influence your opinion about the morality of choosing abortion?”
70% said the law has played a major role in the moral perception of abortion….and asked whether of not they would have sought an illegal abortion if a legal abortion has not been available, 75% said they “definitely would not have sought an illegal abortion.”
David C. Reardon “Aborted Women: Silent No More” (Westchester Ill, Crossway , 1987) pgs 13, 15
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of NARAL, explained how his organization helped make abortion legal:
“We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the US. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public…
baby at 12 weeks, still within the time most abortions are performed
In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control US and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.”
Teresa Tomeo Recall Abortion: Ending the Abortion Industry’s Exploitation of Women (Charlotte, North Carolina: St. Benedict Press, 2013) 53
