According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. abortion rate hit a historic low in 2015, and a record-low 638,169 abortions were reported to the CDC across the whole country.
This is worth celebrating on some level, though the number of abortions is still appallingly high, a scale of human loss almost impossible to comprehend. Not only is the lower abortion rate partially attributable to increased contraception use — and thus a lower rate of unintended pregnancy — but the rate of unintended pregnancies that end in abortion has shrunk, too. We should be glad for small glimmers of hope.
At the same time, though, these new data reveal that, as the U.S. abortion rate has dropped, “women’s health-care provider” Planned Parenthood’s share of the abortion market has grown. According to the CDC, there were 652,639 abortions reported in the U.S. in 2014. That same year, Planned Parenthood reported performing 323,999 abortions.
Then, when the number of abortions nationwide shrunk to 638,169 in 2015, Planned Parenthood’s abortion business expanded. The group’s own annual report indicates that its clinics provided 328,348 abortions over the course of 2015, amounting to more than half of all the officially reported abortions in the U.S.
When the overall abortion rate in the U.S. decreased, Planned Parenthood’s share in the U.S. abortion market nationwide continued to expand, even as the group insisted that abortion is just 3 percent of its services, and even as it raked in more than half a billion dollars from the federal government.
This isn’t an anti-woman, anti-abortion narrative; these are proven statistics. Planned Parenthood is our nation’s largest abortion provider, by far, and even as fewer women choose abortion, the corporation continues to make its primary profit each year from performing these procedures.
Instead of being permitted to get away with never saying the word “abortion” and denying the reality of their work, Planned Parenthood’s leaders and defenders should be forced to face the facts.