The American pro-life community is looking to future challenges after a recent Guttmacher report on abortion.
The report for 2008 shows a slight increase in the number of abortions in the U.S. up to about 100,000 per month. Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council tells OneNewsNow that RU-486, the abortion pill, played a role in the totals.
"Interestingly, [chemical abortions are] more expensive than surgical abortions," she notes. "So I find that fascinating just in as much as they're touted as being easier on women, which is absolutely not true."
She cites a study showing that emotionally and physiologically, chemical abortions are actually harder on women. "But you know, of course, [when] a woman thinks of taking a pill...that sounds sort of more attractive [and] easier to her," she adds, suggesting a possible financial incentive as well for the manufacturers of the more costly abortion regimens.
Monahan comments on another area -- the ban on partial-birth abortions, a method of late-term abortions, that was outlawed but that continue to be done by abortionists using other methods. The report shows 23 percent of abortionists offered the terminations after 20 weeks of pregnancy -- three-percent increase -- and 11 percent offered abortions after 24 weeks.
"I guess the work to be done specifically in that area would be stricter state laws on gestational ages," she remarks.
In addition, many states are considering passage of a Nebraska-type law that bans abortion after 20 weeks on the basis of proven fetal pain. The battle lines have already been drawn, and the pro-life movement is gearing up to meet those challenges.
Abuse, after-effects of 'morning-after' pill in U.K.
Statistics in Great Britain show a growing dependence on the "morning-after" pill.
The poll found 20 percent of women using the pill in the past year, and a quarter-million women using the so-called "emergency contraceptive" two or more times during the reporting period. In addition, some 18- to 21-year-olds use the morning-after pill as their normal form of contraception.
Proponents had claimed, before its approval, that the pill would only be used as an emergency, according to Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. (Listen to audio report)
"Sadly, women are unwittingly taking this drug, assuming that it would be safe and would have no detrimental effects on them or their possible unborn child," he shares. "But it's simply unknown what kind of effects it could have."
Wright suggests that women and young girls have been victimized by turning them into the equivalent of human guinea pigs.
"And there isn't full knowledge [about the pill] because there's not been adequate testing to find out what kind of effects it will have on women," laments the family advocate. "So the abortion proponents are using women to promote their own political agenda."
And that agenda, she explains, is to promote drugs and devices that can cause abortion and blur the line between contraception and abortion, the objective being to cause more people to accept abortion.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: January 16, 2011
