By Dave Andrusko
On Monday National Right to Life unveiled its 10th annual “The State of Abortion in the United States”.
Its 84-pages are must reading for all pro-lifers as we look back at 2022 (and before) and ahead to 2023.
The report is laid out in seven sections. Here is a brief overview of the first three. We’ll talk about the other four on Friday.
“United States Abortion Numbers” analyses data from both Guttmacher and the CDC through 2020. We add estimates for subsequent years (2021-2022), and NRLC concludes that “64,443,118 abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973.” There is also a keen analysis of how chemical abortions, which now account for over half of the abortion performed in the United States, “Have Altered America’s Abortion Landscape.”
This is very exhaustive section which does a superb job explaining everything from changes in the abortion ratio to who is having abortions to differences among the states.
“Federal policy and abortion” reminds us that even after the Dobbs Decision, Congress and the White House will play an instrumental role in protecting unborn babies. As you know, pro-abortion Democrats were in charge of both Houses of Congress and the White House the past two years. Quoting from the report
“Pro-abortion advocacy groups have intensified efforts to pass a federal ‘abortion rights’ statutes (e.g., the ‘Women’s Health Protection Act,’ formerly the ‘Freedom of Choice Act’). They have extracted endorsements of such measures from three presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and have taken several votes. None of these measures were able to pass both houses of Congress.
The Hyde Amendment
Of course, we knew the life-saving Hyde Amendment—estimates are that up to 2.5 million lives have been saved—would be in the Democrats’ cross-hairs. “The presidency of Joe Biden marked one of the sharpest departures from this long-standing principle, that tax dollars should not fund abortion,” according to the report, “The Biden Administration has taken numerous aggressive steps to circumvent the clear Congressional intent in regards to prohibitions of tax-payer funded abortion.” Fortunately, pro-life Republicans now control the House of Representatives.
Tomorrow we will discuss “State Laws and abortion”; The pro-abortion Equal Rights Amendment; a synopsis of the major abortion cases decided by the Supreme Court, and the Presidential record on abortion going all the way back to Ronald Reagan.