WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its annual “Abortion Surveillance Report” on Wednesday, which shows that the number of abortions took a slight increase in 2018, compared to data from 2017. However, the figure is still down 22% from 2009, when an uninterrupted downward trend began as observed by federal analysts.
609,095 abortions were reported from 48 reporting areas in 2017, down from 623,471 abortions in 2016. The figure increased, however, to 614,820 abortions in 2018, a 1% rise from the previous year.
The tally equates to 11.3 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 and 189 abortions per 1,000 live births.
As the states of California, Maryland and New Hampshire did not submit data, the actual total is most likely between 800,000 to 900,00 abortions. 132,680 abortions were committed in California alone in 2017, the latest year on record from the Guttmacher Institute, which also analyzes abortion data. The organization calculates that there were 862,320 abortions in America that year.
As in previous years, the CDC report outlined that “women in their 20’s accounted for the majority of abortions” and “had the highest abortion rates,” with a total of 352,942 abortions. The vast majority of women obtaining abortions — 85.2% — were unmarried, compared to 14.8% of married women.
The statistics equate to “378 abortions per 1,000 live births for unmarried women,” the CDC notes.
In regard to adolescent abortions, college age students 18-19 remain by far the largest age bracket of teens obtaining abortions.
“Among the 46 areas that reported women’s age by individual year among adolescents for 2018, adolescents aged 18–19 years
accounted for the majority (69.7%) of adolescent abortions and had the highest adolescent abortion rates (8.6 and 12.2 abortions per 1,000 adolescents aged 18 and 19 years, respectively),” the report states.
More than 54K youth ages 13-19 obtained an abortion in 2018.
The number of abortions in 2018 varied widely from state to state, with some states seeing a decrease from the last reporting period, others an increase, and some remaining about the same.
77,250 abortions were reported in New York (down 10K from 2016), the majority by far still being in New York City; 55,140 abortions in Texas (up nearly 2K) from 2016); 16,451 abortions in Virginia (down almost 500 from 2016) and 36,587 abortions in Illinois (up 4K from 2016).
There were 2,909 abortions in Missouri (a 36% drop from the last reporting period); 3,070 abortions in Utah (up slightly from the previous report); 1,202 abortions in Vermont (also up slightly); and 472 abortions in South Dakota (a 28% decrease).
More than half — 59.9% — of the mothers who ended the lives of their unborn babies in 2018 obtained an abortion for the first time, while 33.8% had previously ended the lives or of one or two children (113,191 mothers had one previous abortion and 46,801 mother had two). According to the report, 30,377 mothers had previously obtained three or more abortions.
The overwhelming majority (92%) of the children killed were under 13 weeks gestation, with 77% losing their lives under nine weeks gestation. Half of babies younger than nine weeks old died by drug-induced abortions, and more than half of those under 13 weeks died by surgical abortion.
Surgical abortion for this gestational period involves the methods aspiration curettage, suction curettage and manual vacuum aspiration, which involve using suction to rip the baby from the womb — tearing off a tiny arm or leg in the process.
As the report outlines, “After nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, the total number, rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years), and ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) of reported abortions increased rapidly, reaching the highest levels in the 1980s, before decreasing at a slow yet steady pace. During 2006–2008, a break occurred in the previously sustained pattern of decrease, although this break has been followed in subsequent years by even greater decreases.”
Read the CDC Abortion Surveillance Report in full here.
As previously reported, in early America, Christians were staunchly against abortion, seeing the shedding of innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-17) and the discontinuance of a life created and given by God as murder.
In his 1869 sermon entitled “Ante-Natal Infanticide,” E. Frank Howe, the pastor of the Congregational Church of Terre Haute, Indiana, said, “[I]t makes no matter that the victim cannot stretch out its hands in defense. … It matters not that it … can utter no cry of pain or reproach. The sacred gift of human life is taken — is deliberately taken, and this constitutes the crime, and that crime is murder.”
He lamented that “men and women place their own ease and pleasure above God’s law” and that “public opinion is so corrupted there is no voice of reproach,” forthrightly declaring, “Put what face upon it the community will, disguise it under whatever name you please, you can make no more or less of it than simple murder.”
The late preacher Lee Roy Shelton wrote in “The Crimes of Our Times” in a section on abortion:
“When killing anyone, the murderer is guilty of taking the life which God has given, and therefore he is ‘playing God’ by saying when and how a man should die. But God doesn’t look lightly upon those who try to take His place.”
“God has given us the Sixth Commandment as a fence about human life to preserve it, for it is sacred to Him. Yes, the Bible declares human life to be sacred. It is a divine creation, mysterious and magnificent in its beginning and possibility, utterly beyond the control or comprehension of any human being. It is never to be taken away at the will of anyone, for how can they tell the full meaning of that life and what it will bring forth?”
Ecclesiastes 11:5 states, “As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.”
Psalm 139:13-16 reads, “For Thou hast possessed my reins; Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
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