CDC Report Shows Abortion Rates Falling to ‘Historic Lows,’ But at Least 650,000 Babies Still Murdered Each Year

WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released its annual “abortion surveillance” report, showing that abortion rates are continuing to fall and are at “historic lows,” but still more than 650,000 babies are being murdered each year.

“A total of 652,639 abortions were reported to CDC for 2014,” the organization wrote, outlining the latest year on record. “Among the 48 areas that reported data every year during 2005–2014, the decreases in the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions that occurred during 2010–2013 continued from 2013 to 2014, resulting in historic lows for all three measures of abortion.”

The figure is down two percent from 2013, when 664,435 abortions were reported, and equates to 186 abortions for every 1,000 births.

The total reflects information provided from 47 states, plus the District of Columbia and New York City. As California, Maryland and New Hampshire are not included in the figures, the abortion rate could be much higher, considering that the Guttmacher Institute reported earlier this year that 157,350 abortions occurred in California alone in 2014.

As in previous years, the report outlined that “women in their 20’s accounted for the majority of abortions and had the highest abortion rates,” with a total of 305,539 abortions. The vast majority of women obtaining abortions—85.5%—were unmarried, up less than a percentage point from the year prior. The figures equate to “373 abortions per 1,000 live births for unmarried women,” the CDC notes.

Teenage pregnancy saw the greatest decline, falling to 46,596 adolescent abortions from 64,120 in 2013. However, as in other years, most adolescent abortions were obtained by college-aged women, as 66.8% were age 18 or 19—a total of 31,128 of the over 46,000 teenage abortions. 14,167 abortions were obtained by teenage girls ages 15-17, and 1,300 girls were under the age of 15.

The number of abortions in 2014 varied widely from state to state, with 93,984 abortions in New York, 54,401 abortions in Texas, 32,683 abortions in Pennsylvania and 33,918 abortions in Illinois, but 5,104 abortions in Mississippi, 1,767 abortions in Idaho, 1,161 abortions in Vermont, and 755 abortions in South Dakota.

Most of the mothers who aborted their unborn babies in 2014 obtained an abortion for the first time, while 36.3% had previously ended the lives or of one or two children. According to the report, 8.6% had obtained three or more abortions.

67.4% of the children killed were under 13 weeks gestation and died by surgical abortion. Surgical abortion for this gestational period includes the methods of aspiration curettage, suction curettage and manual vacuum aspiration, which involve using suction to rip the baby from the womb.

“The suction machine has a force approximately 10 to 20 times the force of a household vacuum cleaner. The procedure is completed as the abortionist uses a sharp metal device called a curette to empty the remains of the child from the mother’s uterus,” the site abortionprocedures.com outlines.

Out of the 652,639 abortions in 2014 that were tallied by the CDC (not including figures from three states), as previously reported, 323,999 were performed by Planned Parenthood, which despite its claims, is considered the largest abortion provider in the nation.

328,348 babies were aborted by Planned Parenthood in 2015 according to the organization’s annual report, which was released in May.