The abortion rate in the United States fell thirteen percent between 2008 and 2011, and is now at its lowest point since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in 1973. A report from the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, found that there were 1.1 million abortions in 2011, or 16.9 per thousand women of childbearing age, down from 2008, when there were 1.21 million abortions, a rate of 19.4 per thousand women. Make of those statistics what you will, because that’s what advocates on both sides are doing. The author attributed her findings to a national decline in pregnancy and birth rates, as well as improved contraceptive use. Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, claimed it just proves that “women are rejecting the idea of abortion as the answer to an unexpected pregnancy.”
