On November 5, President Bush enacted the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which makes it unlawful for US doctors to perform partial-birth abortions, except when necessary to save the life of the mother. The Senate voted 64-34 to ban partial-birth abortions, while the House passed the legislation by 281-142 votes. Bush commented among other things the ban was one practical step toward reducing abortions, and building what he referred to as "a culture of life", but that the USA wasn't ready for a total ban on all abortions.
"Partial-birth" abortion is a rare procedure done in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters, where a fetus is partly delivered before being killed. The expression itself is not actually part of the formal medical lexicon. The Act makes it illegal for doctors to take overt action to abort a late-term fetus in the second or third trimester, by bringing the baby's body out of the birth canal, and then killing it, and does not exempt a woman whose health is at risk by carrying the pregnancy to term (a factor which led Bill Clinton to veto previous proposals for such a law), nor does it consider ailments or deformities which the child may suffer in life. Those opposing the Act argue that the legal formulation could be taken to apply to some safe and common procedures (banning the safest methods used as early as 12 weeks, well before amniocentesis), that the real aim behind this Act is to erode abortion rights as such, and that it substitutes governmental judgement for medical judgement. Laws to ban late-term abortion procedures were passed since the mid-1990s in about 30 American states, and some states apparently have a specific ban on state funding of these procedures. While the local statutes contain maternal "life" exceptions, they generally don't include a maternal "health" exception. The Gallup poll results on this topic since 1995 show consistently that a majority of Americans support abortion only "under certain circumstances". In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup telephone survey of a randomly selected national sample of 1,006 adults, 18 years and older on 24-25 October, respondetns were asked "Now I would like to ask your opinion about a specific abortion procedure known as "late term" abortion or "partial birth" abortion, which is sometimes performed on women during the last few months of pregnancy. Do you think that the government should make this procedure illegal, or do you think that this procedure should be legal?". 68% said the partial abortion procedure should be illegal; 25% said it should be legal; and 7% had no opinion. Gallup states that "Americans' opposition to partial-birth abortion is consistent with their more general reluctance to endorse abortions conducted after the first trimester. Past Gallup polling has shown that Americans accept late-term abortions under certain conditions -- such as when the woman's life is endangered or the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest -- but finds that their fundamental stance on abortion after the third month of pregnancy is generally unfavorable. Only 25% think abortion should generally be legal in the second trimester and only 10% think it should be legal in the last trimester. By contrast, two-thirds of Americans (66%) say it should be legal in the first trimester." Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031106.asp According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, from 1996 to 2000 , total abortions in the USA by legal abortion providers fell to 1.31 million, and the abortion rate declined by 5% to 21.3% per 1,000 women aged 15-44 (this rate declined by 12% between 1992 and 1996). The actual abortion ratio in 2000 was 24.5% per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live births, 5% lower than in 1996. Abortions performed by dilation or extraction were 0.17% of all abortions performed. About 43% of the decline in abortion between 1994 and 2000 is attributable to the use of emergency contraception. Source: http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/journals/3500603.pdf AGI says that 49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; 1/2 of these are terminated by abortion. In 2000, 1.31 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.36 million in 1996. From 1973 through 2000, more than 39 million legal abortions occurred. Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 48% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 61% have had a previous birth. Each year, an estimated 46 million abortions occur worldwide. Of these, 20 million procedures are obtained illegally. 52% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 19%. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2 1/2 times as likely. 43% of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as Protestant, and 27% identify themselves as Catholic. 2/3 of all abortions are among never-married women. Over 60% of abortions are among women who have had 1 or more children. On average, women give at least 3 reasons for choosing abortion: 3/4 say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; about 2/3 say they cannot afford a child; and 1/2 say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner. 54% of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users reported using the methods inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users reported correct use. 8% of women having abortions have never used a method of birth control; nonuse is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or poorly educated. 9 in 10 women at risk of unintended pregnancy are using a contraceptive method. 49% of the 6.3 million pregnancies that occur each year are unplanned;14 47% of these occur among the 7% of women at risk of unintended pregnancy who do not practice contraception. As much as 43% of the decline in abortion between 1994 and 2000 can be attributed to the use of emergency contraception. The number of abortion providers in the USA declined by 11% between 1996 and 2000 (from 2,042 to 1,819). 87% of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2000. These counties were home to 34% of all 15-44-year-old women. 97% of abortion facilities provide abortion at 8 weeks, and 86% provide services at 12 weeks, but provision drops off steeply after that, with only 13% of providers offering services at 24 weeks. A growing proportion of providers offer very early abortion (at 4 weeks gestation), and increase from 7% in 1993 to 37% in 2000. In 2000, the cost of a nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia at 10 weeks of gestation ranged from $150 to $4,000, and the average amount paid was $372. Source: http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html UNICEF claims a contraceptive prevalence rate in the USA of 76%, 99% of babies are delivered by skilled attendants, and the maternal mortality ratio is 8 per 100,000. Infant mortality rates from the 1990s reduced by 2% annually, and the under-five infant mortality rate is currently 8 per 1,000 live births. Source: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/usa_statistics.html Jurriaan
