WASHINGTON – Today, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, released its fourth annual report examining “The State of Abortion in the United States.”
The report summarizes key legislative developments at the state and federal level, analyzes two recent reports showing dramatic declines in abortion numbers, as well as the abortion rate and abortion ratio, and shows that a majority of people continue to oppose Roe v. Wade’s abortion-for-any-reason doctrine.
“The right-to-life movement continues to see evidence that our efforts to educate our nation about the unborn child’s humanity and our efforts to enact protective pro-life legislation are having a tremendous impact in moving our nation away from Roe and Doe’s deadly legacy,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Pro-life Americans made their voices heard last November,” she continued. “We now have pro-life majorities in both houses of Congress and, with the Trump Administration, a White House dedicated to advancing pro-life policies that help mothers and their unborn children.”
As detailed in the 64-page-long National Right to Life report, recent data in a new survey of 1,671 abortion clinics, hospitals, and private physicians released by the Guttmacher Institute found that the number of abortions being performed in the U.S. in 2014 had dropped to 926,190 from 958,200 in 2013, representing the lowest total in thirty years.
“The State of Abortion in the United States” also discusses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual “Abortion Surveillance Report,” for 2013. That report confirmed that the number of abortions continues to decline.
The report also details efforts to pass bills at both the state and federal level, including the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act.
Sixteen states have passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would generally protect unborn children from abortion beginning at 20 weeks, based on their capacity by that point, if not earlier, to experience excruciating pain.
In addition, during the 2015 legislative session, Kansas and Oklahoma became the first two states to enact National Right to Life’s model legislation prohibiting the use of dismemberment abortions, followed by West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in 2016.
The report is available from the National Right to Life Communications Department.