WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released its annual “abortion surveillance” report, showing that abortion rates are continuing to fall in the United States, but still more than 638,000 babies were murdered in 2015.

“A total of 638,169 abortions for 2015 were reported to CDC,” the organization wrote, outlining the latest year on record. “Among the 49 areas that reported data every year during 2006–2015, decreases in the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions resulted in historic lows for the period of analysis for all three measures of abortion.”

The figure is down two percent from 2014, when 652,639 abortions were reported, and equates to 188 abortions for every 1,000 births.

The total reflects information provided from 47 states, plus the District of Columbia and New York City. As California, Maryland and New Hampshire are not included in the figures, the abortion rate could be much higher, considering that the Guttmacher Institute reported that 157,350 abortions occurred in California alone in 2014, the latest year on file with the organization, and outlined that “[a]bortions in California represent 17.0% of all abortions in the United States.”

As in previous years, the report outlined that “women in their 20’s accounted for the majority of abortions and had the highest abortion rates,” with a total of 327, 609 abortions. The vast majority of women obtaining abortions—85.3%—were unmarried, compared to 14.7 percent being married. The figures equate to “373 abortions per 1,000 live births for unmarried women,” the CDC notes.

Teenage pregnancy saw the greatest decline, falling to 49,596 adolescent abortions from 53,967 in 2014. However, as in other years, most adolescent abortions were obtained by college-aged women, as 67.8% were age 18 or 19.

The number of abortions in 2015 varied widely from state to state but with little change from the year prior, with 88,762 abortions in New York, 54,194 abortions in Texas, 32,025 abortions in Pennsylvania and 35,327 abortions in Illinois. There were 4,699 abortions in Mississippi, 1,695 abortions in Idaho, 1,121 abortions in Vermont, and 659 abortions in South Dakota.

More than half of the mothers who aborted their unborn babies in 2015 obtained an abortion for the first time, while 43.6% had previously ended the lives or of one or two children. According to the report, 8.2% had obtained three or more abortions.

91.1% of the children killed were under 13 weeks gestation and 64.3% died by surgical abortion. Surgical abortion for this gestational period includes the methods of aspiration curettage, suction curettage and manual vacuum aspiration, which involve using suction to rip the baby from the womb.

Out of the 638,169 abortions in 2015 that were tallied by the CDC (not including figures from three states), as previously reported, 328,348 were performed by Planned Parenthood, which despite its claims, is considered the largest abortion provider in the nation.

In speaking on the issue of abortion, the late author and speaker Francis Schaeffer once lamented that society no longer views its fellow man as being made in the image of God, and has consequently devalued both young and old, having no issue with ending life.

“The intrinsic value of the human life is founded upon the Judeo-Christian concept that man is unique because he is made in the image of God, and not because he is well, strong, a consumer, a sex object or any other thing,” he said. “[W]hatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, [and] is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.”

“Abortion itself would be worth spending much of our lifetimes to fight against because it is the killing of human life, but it’s only a symptom of the total,” Schaeffer continued. “What we are facing is humanism: Man, the measure of all things, viewing final reality being only material or energy shaped by chance, therefore, human life having no intrinsic value—therefore, the keeping of any individual life or any groups of human life, being purely an arbitrary choice by society at the given moment.”

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