Fact Checking Abortion Talking Points

Abortion is a complicated issue, to me it's certainly not a yes or no question. Extremists on both sides of the issue have their arguments. I thought it would be good to look at some of the facts.

Abortion is morally accepted and is happening more often.

Actually no, this isn't true. According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates peaked around 1980-1981 at 29.3 abortions per 1000 pregnancies and in 2014 dropped to 14.6 abortions per 1000 pregnancies.

So the rate of abortion is decreasing. If you use this trend as a measure of moral acceptance, you would also have to conclude that a smaller percentage of the population considers abortion morally acceptable. The rash of restrictive state laws being enacted also points to this same conclusion that abortion is not becoming more morally acceptable.

Legal abortion saves women's lives

Obviously this is true, but to hear those in favor of abortion talk you would believe women dying due to illegal abortions was running rampant before legalized abortion. According to Abort73.com in 1972 (one year before Roe vs. Wade in 1973) 24 women died as a result of causes associated with legal abortion and 39 died as a result of illegal abortions. Tragic, yes, but hardly the epidemic proportions one would expect when listening to pro-choice speakers. Additionally, between 1973 and 2014, 437 women have died as a result of legal abortions. On average that is 10.6 deaths per year resulting from legal abortions. One could look at these numbers and maintain that legal abortions are causing the deaths of women.

Women don't know they are pregnant at 6 weeks

With the recent laws being passed by laws prohibiting abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected (about 8 weeks) and some prohibiting abortion after 6 weeks we often hear that women don't know they are pregnant at 6 weeks. While this may be true for some, the evidence about when an abortion takes place indicates a different story. Again from Abort73.com:

So, women don't know they are pregnant at 6 weeks but over a third of all abortions take place at or before 6 weeks of gestation, or before the fetus is 4 weeks old. The numbers just don't add up. In fact, for the fetal heartbeat bills over 65% of abortions take place within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. If women don't know they are pregnant, why are they getting abortions?

Late term abortions happen often

Pro-life speakers will try to imply there are thousands and thousands of babies killed by abortion late in the pregnancy. This is true.

One particular interest in recent new abortion laws has been fetal viability. While this is often considered to be 24-26 weeks into pregnancy a recent study indicates this could be moving back to 22 weeks with the advancement of medical technology. From the data above, only 1.3% of abortions are conducted after the 22 weeks viability time-frame. Granted at 22 weeks the majority of the babies do not survive at all or without serious medical problems but science is still evolving.

According to the CDC, in 2015 there were 638,169 legal abortions in the U.S. The 1.3% of potentially viable fetuses aborted above represents 8296 babies. The data for second and third trimester abortions (14 weeks and later) comes to 8.9% or 56,797 babies.

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Topics such as abortion are emotionally charged on both sides. Taking a few minutes to try to fact check some of the talking points can let us see it more clearly. One thing I believe everyone should do in this debate is to read the description of the abortion processes. After reading this detail, you may find yourself questioning your position on abortion or you may find yourself more entrenched in your beliefs.