Amid controversial blows to abortion restrictions in Ohio and Mississippi, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced incredible news: The abortion rate has plummeted to pre-Roe v. Wade levels.
The abortion rate fell by 2 percent from 2014 to 2015, to a rate of 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 through 44. In 1973, when the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade, there were 16.3 abortions per 1,000 women. The abortion rate has fallen by more than 24 percent in just the past decade.
This is nothing short of remarkable, and we have better education and widespread use of birth control to thank.
If these trends continue, conservatives may not even need the Supreme Court or new restrictions at all to end abortion (at least in the U.S). Only three more states today require that a woman make two separate visits to an abortion clinic than the seven that required it a decade ago. It’s not as though the incredible fall in the abortion rate has come with a substantial increase in state regulations.
It seems as though a cultural change, one which encourages prior planning and hopefully an increasing understanding of the science of abortion, has done more than any legal restriction can.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 11 countries have a birth control use rate of less than 50 percent. In Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia, that rate is below 20 percent. Whereas 17 percent of North American pregnancies end in abortion, a whopping 38 percent of Eastern European ones do, even as abortion laws in the region have begun to tighten. In Latin America, where birth control is increasingly scarce, 32 percent of pregnancies end in abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute, which has historical ties to Planned Parenthood but is an independent research organization, found in a global study that birth control access is the most significant, quantifiable factor in decreasing the worldwide abortion rate. The global rate of unintended pregnancies declined by more than 10 percent from 1990 to 2014 thanks to the mass proliferation of modern contraceptives.
The statistics are clear: Enabling women (and men, for that matter) to take proactive responsibility over their choices leads to less murder by abortion.
Although the abortion rate is still tragically high, the statistics paint a clear, ex post blueprint for the future. We can and should continue to debate over the best way to bring down the list prices of contraceptives now on the market to help low-income women without insurance afford reliable birth control, and we cannot cease to encourage condom use amid a terrifying spike in STDs, the statistics are clear.
But most importantly, we should continue to cultivate a culture of empowerment and respect for the unborn. People on their own, armed with science and acknowledgment of the dignity of human life, can help eradicate abortion.
Now we have one thing more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
