Abortion Rates Decline 30 Years After Roe

By Kenneth Concannon
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 12/19/02)

This Christmas season, as in years past, we once again prepare to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus. Actually, the celebration of that birth has already begun. We see it in manger scenes in churches, on front lawns, in public parks, and in homes throughout this country. We will soon be hearing carolers in the streets and at shopping malls singing about the first Christmas, celebrating in song the Christmas story, the birth of Christ.

For the past twenty-nine years, however, the hope and joy that springs from this holy season has been almost overshadowed by the reality and despair of another anniversary that occurs each year less than one month after Christmas. On Jan. 22, 2003, thousands of protestors will descend on Washington to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the antithesis of Christmas — the infamous Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton abortion decisions that enshrined the slaughter of innocents in the penumbra of unmentioned rights that supposedly emanate from the United States Constitution.

But more than 40 million abortions later there is actually hope on the horizon of the life and death struggle between the pro-life movement and the culture of death. It could have been much worse.

Thirty years after passage of Roe and Doe we could be talking about 50 million abortions instead of 40 million. We could be talking about nearly two million abortions performed in this country every year instead of the 1.3 million currently estimated. We could be talking about abortions being performed on 66 women out of every one thousand American women of childbearing age (14 to 44) instead of 21 out of every thousand. We could be talking about the generation that grew up under the shadow of Roe and Doe — the survivors — being totally sold on "pro-choice" propaganda.

But we aren't. Thanks to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), the data research arm of the abortion industry, we know that the abortion rate in this country peaked over 20 years ago. We know that since 1980 the practice of abortion has been in decline. We know that in 1973, the first year of the Roe and Doe era, 16 out of every one thousand American women of childbearing age submitted to the abortionist's knife, and that by 1980, only seven years later, that number had almost doubled to 29 out of every thousand.

But 1980 was the high water mark for the abortion industry. Thanks again to AGI, we know that since then business has been going in the wrong direction for the abortion industry. The abortion rate has dropped steadily.

By 2000, the last year cited in AGI's track of Roe era abortion rates, the rate had dropped by 28 percent, down to 21 out of every one thousand women of childbearing age. The drop, of course, invariably affected the number of what AGI calls "abortion providers." According to AGI the number of abortion providers declined by 14 percent between 1992 and 1996 — from 2,380 to 2,042.

Although AGI offers no reasons for this unfortunate (to them) occurrence, Gallup does. Americans are becoming more pro-life. According to the Gallup organization: "prior to 1996, Americans were more likely to call themselves pro-choice than they are today." In Gallup's August 2001 poll, "pro-life" respondents matched those calling themselves "pro-choice" (46 percent to 46 percent). Earlier Gallup polls had consistently shown pro-life respondents to be in the minority. Why the shift in public opinion?

In a recent statement by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ("A Matter of the Heart," Nov. 12, 2002) the Bishops described the pro-life movement as "brimming with the vibrancy of youth." The Bishops' optimism is supported by recent Gallup polls that have shown that Americans under 30 — i.e. the survivors of the Roe era — support greater protection for the unborn in larger numbers than almost any other age group. In recent Gallup polls major restrictions on abortion were supported by 55 percent of adults under the age of 30 — a higher figure than for any age group except those aged 65 and over.

The Roe era generation is the one that grew up with abortion in its face.

This is the generation that learned at a very early age what abortion was, and witnessed, also at a very early age, the heartache and tragedy of abortion. This is the same generation that figured out a long time ago that "choice" meant abortion, and that only abortionists refer to the unborn as "fetuses" and "clumps of cells." This is also the generation that grew up with ultrasound devices and is now getting Emails from their pregnant friends with digital pictures of their friends' babies in utero.

Abraham Lincoln once said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time." If he were alive today it's safe to assume that he would have applied that axiom to the abortion industry and the generation that grew up listening to its lies.

We, as Catholics, believe that hope springs eternal, and that most people, when properly informed, will do the right thing. Thirty years after the Roe and Doe decisions we are witnessing that truth.

Concannon is a freelance writer from Manassas.

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