A report by an institute related to Planned Parenthood indicates the number of partial-birth abortions tripled in four years while the overall abortion rate is declining.
Researchers with the Alan Guttmacher Institute say their nationwide survey of abortion providers shows an estimated 2,200 dilation and extraction, or D&X, abortions were conducted in 2000, the Washington Times said.
A leading pro-life group, however, believes the procedure is much more common than the report indicates.
“We think even the new number only represents a fraction of the true number,” said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee, according to the Times.
Nevertheless, Johnson pointed out that the Guttmacher Institute’s findings show a huge increase in partial-birth abortions, unless it vastly underreported its numbers in 1996.
The late Alan F. Guttmacher, who was president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, founded the non-profit research institute in 1968.
The 2,200 D&X abortions account for 0.17 percent of the more than 1.3 million abortions overall, said institute researchers Lawrence B. Finer and Stanley K. Henshaw.
Pro-choice advocates such as Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, have insisted that the procedure is rare. But Fitzsimmons confessed in a 1995 interview on the ABC program “Nightline” that he “lied through his teeth” and has admitted the procedure is fairly common and performed on healthy mothers who have healthy babies.
In the controversial operation, an unborn child is partially extracted from the womb feet-first, stabbed in the skull with blunt surgical scissors, then pulled out after a vacuum tube has sucked out its brain and collapsed the head. Opponents call the procedure partial-birth abortion because in some cases the fetus is old enough to survive outside the womb.
The Guttmacher researchers say that abortion is in an overall decline because of lower teen pregnancy rates, more contraceptive choices, an aging female baby boomer population and a shrinking pool of abortion providers, down to 1,819 providers in 2000, the Times said.
The report, offering comprehensive data from 1996 to 2000 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, also found the following:
- From 1996 to 2000, the number of abortions fell 4 percent, from 1.36 million to 1.31 million.
- The abortion rate declined 5 percent, to 21.3 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.
- Abortion rates fell in 35 states.
- The newly legal chemical process called mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, is being used in small, but significant numbers as indicated by the estimated 37,000 early medical abortions done in the first six months of 2001.
An issue in new Congress
During the past seven years, Congress has voted repeatedly to ban a procedure former Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “too close to infanticide.” Former President Clinton vetoed the proposed ban twice and the Democrat-controlled Senate prevented the bill from reaching the floor during the 2002 fall term.
Polls show that about two-thirds of Americans want to outlaw the procedure.
The issue is expected to arise in Congress again this year, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2000 that struck down a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion.
Johnson said he expects a federal ban to pass the House of Representatives and hopes it will pass the Senate.
Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League’s Pro-Choice America, said whatever Congress produces is likely to be “extreme and unconstitutional” and restrictive of too many abortion procedures, the Times reported.
Editor’s note: WorldNetDaily marks the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s most controversial decision in history – Roe v. Wade (Jan. 22, 1973) – by dedicating the entire January 2003 edition of its acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine to the subject of abortion. WND’s editors guarantee readers they will never think about abortion the same way after they read this powerful issue.
