A Place to Choose
on the Pregnancy Help Movement & the End of Big Abortion
The contemporary pregnancy help movement is largely responsible for the decline in U.S. abortion numbers over the years, beginning in the mid-1980s. Roe v. Wade nationalized abortion, overruling state laws, and, according to the Guttmacher Institute (whose figures are more reliable than the CDC’s), numbers shot up from 745,600 in 1973 to 1,600,000 in 1981, before leveling off. The number of pregnancy help centers increased slightly in the same period, but then increased sharply in the mid-1980s, and abortion numbers began their steady decline until about 2017. These centers now number about 2,700. They include those that offer counseling as well as material and practical help, those that also offer medical services such as ultrasound and STI testing and treatment, and maternity homes.
State laws (before recent changes to the laws) also had a demonstrable effect on abortion numbers, especially when Medicaid funding was approved or denied for abortion, but such changes to laws had limited, if immediate, effects. The increase in pregnancy help centers, however, correlates well with the steadily dropping abortion numbers. This pattern follows that of the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century decline in abortions, as the maternity homes of that period increased in number and reach. (See Marvin Olasky, Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America, 1992.)
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Abortion from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
30.3—May/June 2017
on the Misuse of Property Rights to Justify Slavery & Abortion by Robert Hart
24.1—January/February 2011
How Planned Parenthood's Founder Played the Christians, and Won by Allan C. Carlson
more from the online archives
18.3—April 2005
on Being a Free Narnian & the Joy of Subordination by Donald T. Williams
31.5—September/October 2018
Errands into the Moral Wilderness
Forms of Christian Family Witness & Renewal by Allan C. Carlson
30.3—May/June 2017
on the Misuse of Property Rights to Justify Slavery & Abortion by Robert Hart
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
