U.S. Abortion Totals for 2009, 2010 and 2011

One of the great challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of pro-life engagement is reporting lag. At any given time, the most current, federal abortion data is three or four years old. Imagine if businesses had to wait that long to find out if their marketing initiatives were succeeding. Imagine not knowing for four years whether or not your business model was falling flat on its face! That would be a thoroughly unworkable situation, and yet that's exactly where abortion opponents find themselves. The abortion industry has immediate, insider access to the ebb and flow of abortion. We do not. But while the abortion industry has the money, the data, the media and the President, we have the rectitude—which is no small thing.

A couple years ago, I realized that this maddening data delay can be partially mitigated by cutting out the middlemen, so to speak. Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute seem to sit on abortion data for a few years, most state health departments make it available in a much more timely manner. And they also break it out by county—which is plenty useful in its own right. The blog post that resulted from that discovery, "Tracking Abortion in America’s Largest Cities," analyzed data that wouldn't be federally available until earlier this year and helped demonstrate the urban-centricity of abortion. Not only do abortion rates vary widely from state to state, they vary just as widely from metro to non-metro. The bigger the

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Live Action vs LeRoy Carhart

Live Action released another undercover video this morning in their ongoing exposé of late term abortion. Today's offering is the fourth in a series they've dubbed "Inhuman." To me, it is the most remarkable of the bunch. With each new release—and they have produced dozens of these videos over the last few years, I marvel at how this group of relatively young and underfunded activists continues to make such fools out of abortion clinics across the country. Lila Rose, who founded Live Action and carries out most of their sting operations, has got to be the most recognizable pro-life advocate in America, and yet she continues to enter abortion clinics across the country where she exposes their counselors and physicians as unscrupulous reprobates. You'd think every clinic in America would have various photos of her behind their desk with the tag, "BEWARE!" Maybe they do, and yet she continues to slip through the cracks.

Why is today's video of particular note? Because today, the person shown on screen is one of the most notorious abortionists in the country—LeRoy Carhart. He is one of only four who will perform an abortion beyond the second trimester, and as revealed in the video, he is as willing to abort a perfectly healthy baby as he is to abort one with disabilities. Dr. Carhart was already in the news this year for abandoning one of his patients to die, after complications arose from her late-term abortion. That investigation is ongoing. In light of all this, you'd

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Gandhi on Birth Control and Abortion

Do you love your wife enough to not have sex with her? That is one of the provocative questions raised by the book, Birth-Control—a small volume of Gandhi's collective teachings on the subject. I discovered and ordered the book some months ago because I was curious about Gandhi's position on abortion. I finally got around to reading it while doing research for "The Antithesis of Peace." It left me with plenty to think about. Though the book doesn't deal directly with the question of abortion, there can be no doubt as to Gandhi's opinion of it. All of his arguments against artificial birth control are even more applicable to abortion. Consider the following excerpts:

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for any such violation of her laws.

In the West, indeed, people have transgressed all bounds. They indulge in sexual pleasures, and devise measures in order to evade the responsibilities of parenthood.

If it is contended that birth-control is necessary for the nation because of over-population, I dispute the proposition.

Reading that last remark, you might conclude that Gandhi did not see unchecked population growth as a legitimate threat to humanity. That would be incorrect. Gandhi was concerned about population growth, but he regarded birth control and abortion as "solutions" that were infinitely worse than the problem. The human population must be regulated, he

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Why the Abortion Industry is Terrified of Kermit Gosnell

Any press is good press, so the saying goes. But this is not true for abortion. Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion-business in America, knows this full well—which is why their public talking points are built on euphemisms like "women's health" and "reproductive rights" instead of on "abortion." Despite hitching themselves to one of the most grisly practices known to man, Planned Parenthood has maintained a modicum of respectability by masterfully keeping abortion out of the spotlight—while quietly performing close to 1,000 abortions every day. As things stand right now, almost 30% of all the abortions in America take place at Planned Parenthood, and they increase their market share every year.

Compared to Planned Parenthood, Kermit Gosnell is a two-bit player in the world of abortion. The clinic he ran in Philadelphia was paltry by comparison. But now that Gosnell's abortion practice has made national headlines (violating the cardinal rule of abortion-business protocol), Planned Parenthood faces a dilemma. Do they condemn him as a public villain? Or do they stand with the man who shares their basic ideology? For more than two years, Planned Parenthood went with a third option: say nothing, and hope the seedy details of Gosnell's arrest fly under the radar.

Their strategy worked marvelously until this past week, when the national media's relative silence on the Gosnell trial became a story in itself. Suddenly, major news outlets were hustling to prove the

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What Would Planned Parenthood Say About Katie Stockton?

For going on seven years, I have lived in Rockford, IL—a city with a fairly miserable reputation around the country. Whenever you find a "Top Ten Worst Cities" list, you're almost sure to find Rockford. Just last week, I noticed a local merchant selling T-shirts that read: Misery Loves Company: Visit Rockford, Illinois. Truth be told, Rockford is not nearly as bad as some would have you believe, but last week we again made national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Katie Stockton was sentenced to fifty years in prison on Friday for leaving her newborn, baby daughter to freeze to death on a rural highway north of Rockford. The USA Today story reports:

Stockton hid her pregnancy and gave birth to the baby in secret on Dec. 17, 2004. Afterward, she stuffed the baby and soiled clothing into an orange shopping bag and placed it along a dead-end road near her parents' Rockton home. She was questioned in the baby's death at the time, but denied she was the mother and refused to provide a DNA sample.

Years later, detectives got the DNA sample they needed from a discarded cigarette. Stockton finally confessed to the crime in February, in pursuit of a reduced sentence. Though she got less than the 60 years she was eligible for, Judge John Truitt was unwilling to grant the 25-year sentence Stockton's Public Defender requested. Judge Truitt condemned Stockton for choosing to "leave her baby to die despite all the available options… adoption, legal abandonment at a

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