Fewer abortions means…what?!

The Chicago Tribune carried large headline story at the top of the front page today: “Abortions at 30-year low“.

Wow. That’s a startling first glimpse of the newspaper.

The abortion rate in the United States has fallen to its lowest level since 1974, the first full year after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure nationwide, new data show.

This is good news for pro-life people.

The annual rate has been falling steadily since 1981, paralleling a sharp decline in the number of abortion providers. Recent years also have seen an upsurge in legislation making it more difficult for women to access abortions and for doctors to perform them.

Thirty-five years after the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision, in which the Supreme Court said women have a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, states have enacted hundreds of laws requiring mandatory waiting periods, parental consent for minors, ultrasound imaging of the fetus and numerous other regulations.

Other regulations like informed consent for women considering abortion, complete with risk disclosure, and alternative means of handling a crisis pregnancy. That’s good. What could be the reasonable resistence to that? After all, many politicians who support abortion have repeatedly said they “want to make abortion safe, legal and rare.” I think former president Bill Clinton said that, among other liberal Democratic politicians.

So they should be happy to hear that abortion is, indeed, becoming rarer. Isn’t that what they set out to learn? Or….is it?

The new abortion statistics, published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, come from a census of known abortion providers conducted by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research and policy group.

The research and policy arm of Planned Parenthood. So their data collecting was presumably not in the interest of keeping abortion rare.

The story carried a sub-header titled “No reason for drop”. As if they’ve just missed decades of pro-life successes in proving they’re really the ones caring for women. There are a lot of reasons for the drop in the abortion rate, and a good story could be written about that decline. But it wasn’t this one.

The census does not detail the reasons for the decline, and the number of abortion providers in Illinois has not decreased substantially, Jones said. But it’s possible that more providers are concentrated in urban areas, which could mean women in rural areas are having more trouble getting abortions.

Chaiten guessed that lack of access was at least part of the explanation. “We know women are traveling long distances to access these services,” she said. “Not everyone can afford to do that.”

These were the arguments Planned Parenthood Chicago used last summer when they snuck under the radar of Aurora city ordinances and built a massive abortion fortress there, west of the city in a burgeoning suburban community. Though there are other abortionists operating in that suburban area, they weren’t Planned Parenthood clinics, and they wanted to control that business.

So finally the pro-lifers were asked what they thought of the findings.

Bill Beckman, director of the Illinois Right to Life Committee, said he sees the national decline in abortion numbers as a victory for anti-abortion efforts.

That would be pro-life efforts. Media wouldn’t try so hard to change the terminology if it didn’t have some impact in shaping thinking.

“A number of states over the last five or six years have enhanced their pro-life laws, such as requirements for informed consent and parental notice,” said Beckman. “When those laws take effect, the rate of abortion drops. I think the data they’re getting is reflecting that change.”

If it really has been all about “choice” all along, why do Planned Parenthood & co. worry when women are choosing the alternative to abortion?