Legacy of Roe v. Wade – 52 Million Abortions

Fifty-two million American unborn children killed by abortion since 1973. The number is so staggering that to many it is unbelievable. Fifty-two million sons, daughters, grandsons, friends, nieces, nephews denied their very right to exist with a loss to society that cannot be calculated.

Different abortion numbers are reported from various sources. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) provides numbers of annual abortions which are not reliable because the CDC relies on voluntary reporting from many states and doesn’t have data from states like California (where the number is certain to be huge) and New Hampshire. Consequently, National Right to Life and Wisconsin Right to Life rely on numbers provided by the Guttmacher Institute (GI), the former research arm of Planned Parenthood.

Using the GI numbers, National Right to Life estimates that 52 million abortions have been performed in the past 37 years. Abortions once reached a high of 1.6 million annually. Current annual estimates are 1.2 million.

The woman most likely to have an abortion is between the ages of 18-34, unmarried and black.

Wisconsin has experienced one of the most dramatic abortion decreases in the country and certainly in the Midwest. Wisconsin abortions numbered 8,229 in 2008. That same year, Minnesota had 12,948 abortions, Michigan 25,970, and Illinois a whopping 47,717. Wisconsin Right to Life will continue its focused efforts to decrease abortions even further while we pray for the day when abortion is illegal and unthinkable.

Barbara Lyons