(The Daily Signal) Pro-life laws in some states are saving lives, according to the annual “Abortion Surveillance” report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC’s report covers 2022. Roughly half of it accounts for abortion under the Roe v. Wade regime, before the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling that allowed abortion on demand.
The other half of the report accounts for abortion under the post-Dobbs v. Jackson landscape, after the high court sent the issue back to Americans and their elected representatives.
Again, the data is clear: Pro-life laws that went into effect in the immediate aftermath of the court’s Dobbs ruling saved lives. But there’s cause for concern, too. Pro-abortion states are undermining progress in pro-life states.
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Here are key takeaways from the CDC report that you need to know.
Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases a report compiling information about abortion in the United States. The report answers important questions.
Among them: How many abortions happened in a given state during a one-year period? What were the ages and races of women getting abortions? How many previous abortions did these women have? Were they married or unmarried? How many weeks pregnant were the women when the abortions took place? Was the abortion done using pills or a surgical procedure?
The CDC’s data is valuable—to an extent. Reporting to the government agency is voluntary, and not all states submit the same information. Four states submit no information at all.
And the states that don’t participate (California, New York, New Hampshire, and New Jersey) all have weak abortion restrictions, if any. We know that the CDC data undoubtedly is missing thousands of abortions in these jurisdictions.
Some organizations have released more recent data that includes 2023, among them the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute and individual state health departments. But for this discussion, we’re looking specifically at data available to the CDC for its yearly surveillance report.
With the caveat that the data is limited, we can learn from overall trends.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 613,383 abortions took place in 2022. This is down from 625,978 abortions in 2021 and 620,327 in 2020.
Pro-life laws in a dozen states sprang to life after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, and the results are undeniable: These laws save lives, and fewer women and girls were harmed by abortion.
The continued rise in the percentage of abortions that are chemical, rather than surgical, is concerning. For years, activists have sounded the alarm that abortion pills pose the single biggest threat to the progress of the pro-life movement.
The CDC report again proves just how well-founded those warnings are. In 2022, 57.6% of abortions were done by pills rather than surgical procedures. This is up from 56% in 2021 and 22% a decade earlier, in 2012.
Looking back all the way to 2001 (when abortion pills first became an option and were accounted for in the CDC data), such pills were used in less than 3% of all abortions.
When we zoom in on state-specific data, we see that some states with lax abortion laws—including states that border pro-life states—actually saw an increase in the overall number of abortions.
Take New Mexico, for example. Abortions more than doubled from 2021 to 2022. For neighboring Texas in 2022, abortions were a third of what they were the year before. Unfortunately, it appears that many women traveled to New Mexico to obtain an abortion that they otherwise wouldn’t have had back in Texas.
How can we tell? New Mexico reported that 40% of abortions were done on out-of-state residents in 2021. The next year, more than 62% of abortions were performed on out-of-state residents.
This is a dynamic we see in other states as well. Abortions increased in Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and North Carolina. At the same time, the number of abortions performed on out-of-state residents also saw a big bump in these states.
Another troubling dynamic is the shift in when abortions occurred, particularly abortions prior to six weeks gestation (the point at which ultrasound typically can detect an unborn child’s beating heart). In recent years, the percentage of abortions at or before six weeks was rising higher and higher, meaning women were obtaining abortions earlier and earlier in pregnancy.
As the chart below shows, the percentage climbed steadily following Food and Drug Administration approval of the abortion drug mifepristone in 2000. The percentage jumped significantly after 2016, when the Obama administration significantly weakened safety protections for this dangerous drug.
In 2022, the percentage of abortions performed at or before six weeks dropped from 45% to 40%. Looking at the raw numbers, we see that even though fewer abortions occurred in 2022 compared to 2021, thousands more abortions occurred later in pregnancy.
Why does this matter? We see that when more states protect unborn children early in pregnancy, it corresponds with fewer abortions overall.
That said, it’s likely that some women in pro-life states would have gotten an abortion earlier if they could get one in their home states. Instead, they got one later after traveling to a pro-abortion state.
More abortions occurring later in pregnancy should concern everyone who cares about women’s health and safety. After all, the further along a woman is in pregnancy, the more likely she is to experience complications from an abortion.
Will this trend continue to show up in the CDC’s 2023 data? Time will tell.
Besides these takeaways from the agency’s abortion report this year, there’s plenty more number-crunching and analysis to do in the months and weeks to come.
It’s clear that pro-life laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision saved lives. The total number of abortions declined, and hearts are beating today that otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance at life. That’s cause for celebration.
But it’s also clear that pro-life laws in some states are up against radically pro-abortion laws in other states. Women continue to travel to pro-abortion states and dangerous abortion pills continue to be shipped into pro-life states.
The Dobbs ruling was a victory half a century in the making. But the status quo isn’t the end goal. The pro-life movement’s mission never was to protect women, girls, and babies in Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee while abandoning them to abortion on demand in New Mexico, California, and Illinois.
The fight to build a culture of life continues at the local, state, and federal levels. Convincing our fellow citizens of the value and dignity of each and every life is more important than ever.
Editor's note: This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reprinted with permission
