Study maps changing abortion landscape
The most comprehensive study in years of abortion in America underscores a striking change in the landscape, with ever-fewer women choosing abortion and those who do increasingly opting to avoid surgical clinics.
The number of abortions has plunged to 1.2 million a year, down 25 percent since peaking in 1990, according to a report released Thursday – days before the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
In the early 1980s, nearly one in three pregnant women chose abortion. The most recent data show that proportion is closer to one in five.
“That’s a significant drop, and it’s encouraging,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research for the anti-abortion group National Right to Life.
Women looking to end early pregnancies are gravitating to medication abortions, in which they take two pills under a doctor’s supervision to induce miscarriage. This approach lets them avoid surgery – and the protesters who often picket clinics – and expel the embryo in the privacy of their homes. The Food and Drug Administration approved the pills in 2000 for use through the seventh week of pregnancy.
By 2005, the most recent year covered by the report, the pills accounted for 13 percent of all abortions.
The research was conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that focuses on reproductive issues. The institute supports abortion rights and has received funding in the past from Planned Parenthood. Abortion opponents, however, generally view its statistics as reliable.
The Guttmacher report came to no conclusions about why the abortion landscape has changed. But that didn’t stop activists on both sides from speculating — and using the data to press their political agendas.
Abortion-rights advocates suggested women may not be terminating as often because they’re avoiding unwanted pregnancies, thanks in part to emergency contraception, known as the morning-after pill, which is sold without a prescription to women 18 and older.
Led by Planned Parenthood, activists have pledged to spend much of 2008 lobbying for laws to make all forms of birth control cheaper and more widely accessible. They also plan to push states to require sex-education classes that teach contraception.
A political tactics manual recently developed for Planned Parenthood asserts that voters respond well to such issues especially when they’re framed with buzzwords like “prevention,” “protection” and “personal responsibility.”
Keeping the focus on abortion is exactly what opponents want.
They contend that the more women learn about the procedure, the less likely they are to choose it. The falling abortion rate, they say, may be the result of laws mandating counseling before an abortion.
More than 30 states have such laws. Some of the material given to women is false or misleading – for example, warnings that abortion raises the risk of breast cancer or causes post-traumatic stress disorder. Brochures often use photos of fetal development through nine months, though 90 percent of abortions take place in the first trimester. North Dakota’s packet informs women that the term fetus comes from the Latin for “young one.”
Abortion opponents view such material as a vital tool; they plan to lobby to expand this type of counseling.
Some of the biggest drops in the abortion rate, however, have come in states that do not impose tight restrictions.
Oregon, for instance, was rated this week by Americans United for Life as the nation’s “least pro-life state,” yet its abortion rate dropped 25 percent from 2000 to 2005 – more than any state except Wyoming.
The data suggest that the decline in abortions may be due not to legal restrictions, but to a shift in “socio-cultural mores” – in other words, women’s attitudes, said John Seery, a professor at Pomona College who studies the politics of abortion.
The Guttmacher report offered the first comprehensive census of abortion providers since 2000.
The number of abortion clinics nationwide was down 15 percent, a net loss of four dozen surgical clinics. But other women’s health centers and doctors in private practice filled the gap by offering medical abortions.
That trend may have political implications.
Abortion clinics have been besieged by “an escalation of pickets and protests,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. It’s much harder for protesters to identify a physician in private practice.
“Increasing reliance on nonsurgical abortions is a problem for the anti-abortion movement,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University. “There is little popular support for restricting such abortions.”
On the other hand, the trend isn’t a clear victory for abortion-rights advocates. “It’s harder for protesters to target these physicians, but it’s also harder for women to find them,” said Rachel K. Jones, a senior research associate at Guttmacher.