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Abortion Facts

A good friend of mine, Monica, works for Right to Life in South Bend, and I'm going to be verifying a few facts for her. I guess it looks better on record if somebody who's not employed by them does it, and these are all interesting details to me anyway. So over the course of the next week or so, the below items will have links and citations referenced next to them:

Updated links and explanations below.


  1. More than one million unborn children are killed by legal abortions in the United States every year.

    Generated by The Alan Guttmacher Institute's Custom Table Maker:
    (http://www.guttmacher.org/about)
    (http://www.guttmacher.org/tablemaker)

    CountryNumber of abortions1# abortions by occurrence, 2000 (U.S. and each state)
    SourceSourceSource
    United States1,365,700nd
    U.S. totalnd1,312,990

    na = not applicable, u = unavailable in original publication, nd = no data in database for this country/state.

    Footnotes
    1.Rounded to the nearest 100.

    Source and Survey Years (1998):[Back to Top]
    Source: AGI, Sharing Responsibility: Women Society & Abortion Worldwide, New York: AGI, 1999. Notes on Data Sources.

    Survey Years: United States, 1996;

    Source and Survey Years:[Back to Top]
    Source: Finer LB and Henshaw SH, Abortion incidence and services in the United States in 2000, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1):6-15.





  2. Every year in the United States, more than 100,000 legal abortions are performed on women who are more than 8 weeks.


    3. Induced Abortion :: When Women Have Abortions (in weeks):
    (http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html)

    Less than 9 weeks: 55.7%
    9 or more weeks: 44% (9-10: 22%, 11-12: 11%, 13-15: 7%, 16-20: 4%, 21 or more: 1%)

  3. About one-third of aborted children are African American children.

  4. For every 2 African American babies born, 3 are aborted.

  5. Abortion is the number one killer of African Americans.

  6. There are two million couples in the united states waiting to adopt a child.

  7. Many couples who are waiting to adopt a child are willing to adopt a child with severe mental or physical disabilities.

  8. The heart of an unborn child begins to beat 21 days after conception.

  9. Brain waves can be detected in an unborn child 40 days after conception.

  10. An unborn child can feel pain 8 weeks after conception.

  11. The morning after pill often causes a fertilized human egg to be aborted.

  12. A fertilized human egg is a distinct and complete human being.

  13. The morning after pill is used in hospitals in the Michiana area.

  14. According to expert medical doctors, partial birth abortion is never necessary to save the life of a mother.

  15. Before it was banned, partial birth abortion was used to abort thousands of babies every year in the United States.

  16. The law still allows partial birth abortion if it is necessary to save the life of the mother.

  17. Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the United States.

  18. In the year 2000, Planned Parenthood’s abortion business brought in more than 69 million dollars.

  19. From 1985 to 2000, Planned Parenthood received more than 2.2 billion tax dollars.

  20. Embryonic stem cells that are used in research, must be harvested from a living human embryo.

    21. National Institutes of Health :: Stem Cells Information :: Stem Cell Basics ::
    What are embryonic stem cells? (stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp)
    The embryos from which human embryonic stem cells are derived are typically four or five days old and are a hollow microscopic ball of cells called the blastocyst.

  21. A human embryo dies when stem cells are harvested.

    22. National Institutes of Health :: Stem Cells Information :: Stem Cell Basics ::
    What are embryonic stem cells? (stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp)
    How are embryonic stem cells grown in the laboratory? Human embryonic stem cells are isolated by transferring the inner cell mass - The cluster of cells inside the blastocyst. These cells give rise to the embryonic disk of the later embryo and, ultimately, the fetus. - into a plastic laboratory culture dish that contains a nutrient broth known as culture medium.

  22. There are other sources of human stem cells that can be harvested without killing a human embryo.

    23. National Institutes of Health :: Stem Cells Information ::
    Stem Cell Basics :: What are adult stem cells? (stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics4.asp)
    Though... Frequently Asked Questions :: Why not use adult stem cells instead of using human embryonic stem cells in research? (stemcells.nih.gov/info/faqs.asp#useadult)

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