Is the sky falling? Are the nation’s moral foundations so eroded that they are on the verge of collapse?

For two reasons, I will answer no. In the past year, in states across the country, there have been wonderful wins for the cause of life and family. Ultra-sound bills and abortion clinic regulations have been enacted and polls show that Americans are more troubled than ever by abortion-on-demand. There have even been some Supreme Court judicial rulings (e.g., Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC and Spencer v. World Vision) favorable to religious liberty.

These things should inspire us to keep working for faith, family, and freedom in the public square. Although the assaults on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, the very nature of the family, and the religious and economic liberty we cherish are manifold, not to fight them would be to surrender our biblical obligation to work for justice and stand for the oppressed (Proverbs 31:8-9). For the sake of the Just One Himself, this we must never do.

Second, Jesus Christ is Lord of time and eternity. He is Lord when we rejoice and when we weep. He is the sovereign before Whom every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:9-11). Who sustains all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:2). And according to the Psalmist, God is unthreatened by the machinations of political man: “(Though) the kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed … He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (2:2-4).

In other words, God is accomplishing His will in ways our limited human understanding might find puzzling but which are fully commensurate with His character and plan for humanity.

“The Most High rules in the realm of mankind,” we read in Daniel’s prophecy (4:2). He has called us to stand for righteousness and human dignity in every sphere of life. Whatever external wins or losses we might experience in the moment, these truths should sustain us in our efforts at all times.

My mother told me how she’d walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight during World War II. She crossed over walking arm-in-arm with her young sisters-in-law. The kicker: “I was carrying you then,” she said. We differed strongly on abortion, but I will always cherish those stories she gave me as her parting gifts.

Frieda was the mother of one of my best friends in high school. Often, I’d drop by their home, looking for my friend. I’d often linger talking politics with Frieda and her husband, Irv, even if my friend was not at home. Irv was a Democratic zone leader in our town. Frieda did not suffer from polio. She suffered from nothing. Her lively talk distracted me from the special shoes and hobbling gait that polio had inflicted on her. She was totally like her beloved FDR. He, too, used witty repartee to distract everyone from his polio. Frieda and Irv named their black Scottish terrier after FDR’s little dog, Fala, and they moved to his town of Hyde Park when they retired. Frieda and Irv instilled in me an indelible memory of the Holocaust and a deep concern for Israel.

In the midst of many a passionate debate on Fridays, all talk would come to a halt as the sun set. Frieda would be transformed from a strong advocate to a glowing follower of Judaism. “We’re political liberals,” she told me, “but we’re conservative Jews” She lived her faith. I envision Frieda putting on a veil-like head covering and ceremonially lighting the Shabbos candles. Frieda would say the prayers that welcomed the Sabbath “like a treasured guest.”

Last week, on January 22^nd, of all days, my wife, our daughter, and I helped celebrate Marie’s eightieth birthday. She has been like a cherished aunt to my daughter and son-in-law ever since they moved into her town several years back. Marie’s late husband, Joe, had been my seventh grade civics teacher. Joe later volunteered to be my campaign manager when I ran for the New York State Assembly. Joe drove me to Albany to meet the leaders of our party. Learning I had not previously visited our state capital, he said: “You must say a shehechayanu, a Hebrew prayer for the first time you do anything.” Joe’s father was a rabbi who made an aliya to Israel. His father had taught him: “Blessed art Thou, O L-rd, Master of the Universe, that Thou hast preserved us in life to savor this experience for the first time.” And Joe taught it to me. When I took a public stand against abortion, Joe was upset. He told me Marie disagreed strongly, too. But he and Marie never stopped working hard for my election. Frieda and Irv never slackened any effort for me, either.

As I think of these pro-choice women I have loved, I am most grateful for their being in my life. My wife and daughter are pro-life. So, I pray, will be our twin granddaughters. Each of these women, I believe, deserved a birth day.

I take no issue with the Times on slavery or on segregation. The liberal conscience of America—for so the editors see themselves—had an honorable record on those twin evils. In the American Civil War, the Times staunchly defended Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. Similarly, during the modern Civil Rights era, the Gray Lady thundered daily against Jim Crow. It was for many of us the great moral issue of the twentieth century.

In the 1960s and 70s, I was a daily reader of the Times. But recently? Not so much.

And the reason is simply that I cannot abide the Times regularly railing against the defenders of human life. The Times routinely excoriates the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t even ask them about Evangelicals and Lutherans who speak up for the unborn.

Since that grim gray day in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was handed down, the Times has not found a single abortion it could not defend. Of 53,000,000 innocent lives lost, there is not one that should have been welcomed in life and protected by law. At least according to the Gray Lady.

Now, the Times is again putting Thomas Jefferson under its moral microscope. The Gray Lady is perplexed by the paradox of this “Apostle of Liberty” keeping hundreds of black Americans in bondage. Jefferson himself was perplexed. So were virtually all those members of the Founding generation who found themselves “entangled” with the serpent, human bondage. Patrick Henry anguished in a letter to a friend: “Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase!”

So if they were so anguished about it, why did so many of the Founders own slaves? Henry candidly confessed: “I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. . . “ Well, how hypocritical of Henry. He can’t put up with the inconvenience of not owning slaves.

Isn’t it ironic, therefore, that the Times has nothing but praise for Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of abortion? Consider Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992):

To eliminate the issue of reliance that easily, however, one would need to limit cognizable reliance to specific instances of sexual activity. But to do this would be simply to refuse to face the fact that for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives

In short, men and women have a “reliance” interest in abortion-on-demand. O’Connor thinks it’s necessary to keep legal lethal violence against the unborn so that people can order their lives as they wish.

What an insult to professional women like my wife, a high ranking military officer, and the millions of other professional women, including, presumably, Sandra Day O’Connor herself to say that without legal abortion they could not have achieved their honors and status.

We can point to many, many moves the Founders made in an attempt to arrest the expansion of slavery. Jefferson, in particular, sought as a Congressman to ban slavery west of the Appalachian Mountains. He lost in the Confederation Congress by one vote.

“Heaven itself was silent in that awful moment,” he mourned. But Jefferson applauded a partial victory when Congress approved the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery north of the Ohio River.

The First Congress under the Constitution affirmed the Northwest Ordinance and President Washington willingly signed it. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass would point again and again to Jefferson’s approval and Washington’s signature as indisputable proof that Congress could prevent slavery in the territories.

The Founders called slavery wrong and treated as a wrong. They tried in many ways to work for its elimination.

As President, Thomas Jefferson prodded the Congress to take action, early action, to stop the “execrable commerce” [his words] of the Atlantic Slave Trade. He asked Congress in 1806 to act, even though the Constitution prevented the bill from taking effect until January 1, 1808. Jefferson pleaded against this violation of the “human rights of unoffending Africans.” [Again, his stirring words.]

The Times rightly criticizes the author of the Declaration of Independence for failing to follow George Washington’s splendid example of freeing his own slaves. Fair enough.

But the Gray Lady makes no mention of his oceanic achievement in banning the Slave Trade. President Jefferson had no constitutional obligation to act as he did. He didn’t even want the slave ships to depart from Africa’s shores if they would arrive here after January 1, 1808.

Hillary Clinton has said “abortion is wrong” (Newsweek, 31 October 1994), and her husband said it should be “rare.” But their public lives have been dedicated to expanding abortion at home and abroad. The Times has applauded every pro-abortion move by Hillary Clinton, and by Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Never has the Times asked why it is wrong, if it is wrong, or why it should be rare. And the Gray Lady is even less curious about what Mr. Obama or the Clintons have ever done actually to make abortion rare. In fact, the only place President Obama has made abortion rare is on the Moon. He achieved that only by grounding NASA.

The Gray Lady has a positive genius for seeing motes in her neighbor’s eye. She is utterly blind to the beam in her own. And, frankly dear lady, your slip is showing.

There are some interesting findings from this study commissioned by the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.  One is the fact that the authors of the study, Drs. Elizabeth Raymond and David Grimes, used estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, which is tied to Planned Parenthood.  Another finding that was particularly interesting is that they claim abortion is safer due to the amount of deaths that occurred during live childbirth.

There are some medical risks with childbirth, but the effects of abortion are much more dangerous and long-lasting.  Jeanne Monahan, Director, Center for Human Dignity at FRC, recently published an editorial that appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which focused on abortion’s devastating impact on mental health.  According to Monahan:

In the fall, a meta-analysis was published in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry. The report was the most extensive of its kind to date — the author looked at 22 published studies and data from more than 870,000 women. The results showed that women who have an abortion are at an 81 percent increased risk for mental health problems, including anxiety disorders, depression, drug abuse and suicidal behaviors. The study revealed the shocking statistic that close to 10 percent of all mental health problems in women can be directly attributed to abortion.

There are other impacts, as well, that are worth noting.  FRC also released a brochure, “The Top Ten Myths About Abortion,” which provided some insight into the medical complications from abortion.  A surgical abortion could impact whether a woman would be able to conceive and have a healthy pregnancy in the future.

Physical complications include cervical lacerations and injury, uterine perforations, bleeding, hemorrhage, serious infection, pain, and incomplete abortion. Risks of complications increase with gestational age and are dependent upon the abortion procedure.

Long-term physical consequences of abortion include future preterm birth and placenta previa (improper implantation of the placenta) in future pregnancies. Premature delivery is associated with higher rates of cerebral palsy, as well as respiratory, brain, and bowel abnormalities. Pregnancies complicated by placenta previa result in high rates of preterm birth, low birth weight, and perinatal death.

This does not include the physical complications from RU-486, which is prescribed to women who seek a chemical abortion.  These include:  hemorrhage, infection, and missed ectopic pregnancy.  The Food and Drug Administration recently reported that in the ten years since RU-486 was approved in the U.S., at least 11 women have died as a result of complications related to taking the drug.

Additionally, 612 women have been hospitalized, and 339 women required blood transfusions as a result of taking RU-486.  (Food and Drug Administration, “Mifepristone U.S. Postmarketing Adverse Events Summary through 04/30/2011”).

Additionally, government compiled statistics from Poland confirm that the number of abortion-related deaths significantly decreased when abortion was essentially outlawed. The fact that this study was released to coincide with the March for Life activities is not surprising, considering that the pro-choice lobby will do anything to ensure that abortion is in the forefront.

“A pregnant woman being told the sex of the fetus at ultrasonography at a time when an unquestioned abortion is possible is the starting point of female feticide from a health care perspective,” writes Dr. Rajendra Kale.

Quelle surprise, I know.  Canada’s approach to abortion is nearly as extreme as the United States’ in everything but numbers of babies slaughtered.  Yet here’s the interim editor of Canada’s top medical journal sounding the alarm on female feticide and trying to fight back.  Even her admission that Canada allows “unquestioned abortion” before 30 weeks gestation is worthy of note.

The horrible practice of aborting baby girls due to a preference for sons has come to Canada with the immigrant communities who secretly practice it, though it is not thought to be widespread.

Still, “[s]mall numbers cannot be ignored when the issue is about discrimination against women in its most extreme form,” says Dr. Rajendra Kale, interim Editor-in-Chief of the journal. “This evil devalues women. How can it be curbed? The solution is to postpone the disclosure of medically irrelevant information to women until after about 30 weeks of pregnancy.”  Kale advocates that the policy banning sex disclosure before 30 weeks be adopted by the provincial colleges that govern doctors in Canada.

While my first reaction was pleasant surprise, my friend Wesley Smith was more cynical.  From his Secondhand Smoke blog:

Oh, so now abortion is “feticide” is it?  And here I thought the procedure was called, “right to choose.”

Let me see if I have this right: Committing feticide to better enable lifestyle choices or, say, because a boyfriend has left–fine and dandy.  Committing selective feticide to reduce triplets to two triplets and one dead sibling post IVF?  Splendid.  Eugenic feticide that terminates fetuses diagnosed with Down or some other genetic condition.  We should have more, not less.  But aborting because you want a boy instead of a girl, that cannot be tolerated! Never mind that 50% of fetuses killed in abortion are female.  They may be dead, but they weren’t targeted, so it’s okay.

His point is spot on, of course.  But any port in a storm, I guess.  I’ll take the illogical, hypocritical anti-girl-abortion-only approach in the hope that the true reason to be horrified – that the baby is a human and not that the baby is a girl – will somehow take root.

For a recent blockbuster study on the incidence of sex-selection abortion in Indian communities in the United States, see the University of California, San Francisco study conducted by Dr. Sunita Puri revealing an 89% abortion rate for women carrying girls.

Judge Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last week, not only wanted to compel the woman known only as “Mary Moe” to have an abortion – a procedure the serious Catholic Ms. Moe said, explicitly, she did not want – but also to sterilize her. Thankfully, State Appellate Court Associate Justice Andrew R. Grainger has reversed Judge Harms’ ruling, stating that ‘No party requested this measure … and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.” Justice Grainger has now given the case to another judge.

The forced sterilization of roughly 30,000 Americans occurred in our own country in the years leading up to World War II. According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, “Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. Advocates of sterilization policies in both Germany and the United States were influenced by eugenics. This sociobiological theory took Charles Darwin’s principle of natural selection and applied it to society. Eugenicists believed the human race could be improved by controlled breeding.”

The inherent injustice and cruelty of the practice was not only odious to most of our fellow citizens, but its barbarity was cast into horrible relief with the rise of Nazism in German. Hitler’s “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” (July 14, 1933) compelled “the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, such as mental illness (schizophrenia and manic depression), retardation (‘congenital feeble-mindedness’), physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.” In addition to the estimated 400,000 persons sterilized, by 1945 up to 250,000 people had been murdered for their real or perceived physical or mental problems.

Sadly, although mass murder in the name of “racial purity” did not occur in out country, as late as 1970, “The Nixon administration dramatically increase(d) Medicaid-funded sterilization of low-income Americans, primarily Americans of color. While these sterilizations (were) voluntary as a matter of policy, anecdotal evidence later suggest(ed) that they (were) often involuntary as a matter of practice as patients (were) often misinformed, or left uninformed, regarding the nature of the procedures that they … agreed to undergo.” (Source)

All of this poses a troubling question: Our society’s outrage over Judge Harms’ decision, while admirable, is much too muted when it comes to the ongoing death of more than 3,000 unborn children daily in the U.S., as is our culture’s compassion for their mothers, who often are “left uninformed” of the other, non-abortion related options they have.

At FRC, we work with dedicated people across the country to provide those better options. That’s why, on Monday, January 23, FRC will launch the second edition of our “A Passion to Serve: How Pregnancy Resource Centers Empower Women, Help Families, and Strengthen Communities.” Make sure to visit our website, A Passion to Serve, where you will be able to download your own free copy on January 23.

We received one such story and image this past weekend. Sweet, energetic, bright three-year-old, Olivia Ohden, is holding a picture of her sonogram and is a vision of love and joy. The image is accompanied by the words “I’m Pro-life because my mom, Melissa Ohden, is an abortion survivor.”

In 1977 Olivia’s grandmother, Melissa Ohden’s mother, had a saline infusion abortion in a hospital in Iowa.  After her mother delivered the baby, Melissa was believed to be dead. But miraculously, a nurse saw signs of life and this little baby who should have died at six months of gestation survived and thrived…

Listen to Melissa’s story

If you have not yet submitted your story, please consider doing so! Here’s how:

*1.* Pose in a picture with your ultrasound (or first newborn photo) or have your children pose with their first photo.

*2.* Let us know in 140 characters or less why you are Pro-Life!

*3.* Chose two words to describe each individual pictured (examples: Musician, Son or Painter, Mother). And include your age of your infant picture, or the week of the pregnancy in your ultrasound.

*4.* Submit your words and photos (one photo per person, please) via email to: photos@frc.org

Over the next few weeks, we will showcase these powerful images to show the uniqueness and value of every human life.

Be creative in telling your story in a single image! Gather your children to take a group picture with their own ultrasounds or newborn photos, or take fun pictures of them playing happily with their ultrasound photos nearby. Take your own photo with your ultrasound or infant picture while at work or doing a favorite activity or hobby.

Take the pictures in settings that portray what you love, and what your life means. Some of the more poignant photos will be featured in FRC publications and advertisements.

Entries, selected by FRC’s staff, will be featured on the FRC website and our other publications, including Facebook. By submitting photos and/or your story to FRC you are granting FRC a free license and permission to publish, republish, and distribute all or portions of your photos and story, including your words and image, in any format it may choose, including in print, on the Internet, or in any other digital form.

Thanks for standing for life!

Click here to view our “I’m Pro-Life Because…” gallery.

The new health rules are not onerous: They require that facilities that perform abortion “to comply with standards for surgery centers constructed after 2010 — from expanding the width of hallways and the size of operating rooms to providing covered entrances and increasing the number of parking spaces at a facility … They also will require increased medical staffing and allow for unannounced inspections of the clinics and reviews of individual patients’ records” http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2011/sep/15/25/pro-choice-anti-abortion-advocates-address-regulat-ar-1312067/.

The necessity of these standards is demonstrated by the news that two physicians who practiced at a now-shuttered abortion clinic in Maryland have been “charged with multiple counts of murder under the state’s viable fetus law” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2-doctors-accused-of-performing-late-term-abortions-in-md-arrested-and-charged-with-murder/2011/12/30/gIQAfhXOQP_story.html).  The Washington Post reports that “the two doctors were indicted by a grand jury after a 16-month investigation (which) began in August 2010 after a botched procedure at Brigham’s Elkton clinic. An 18-year-old woman who was 21 weeks pregnant had her uterus ruptured and her bowel injured, and rather than call 911, Brigham and Riley drove her to a nearby hospital, where both were uncooperative and Brigham refused to give his name, authorities said. A search of the clinic after the botched abortion revealed a freezer with 35 late-term fetuses inside, including one believed to have been aborted at 36 weeks, authorities said.”

Christians need to be involved in all facets of culture: The arts, media, enterprise both large and small, church ministries, charities – and also politics.  Under former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the State Board of Health – the majority of whose members are appointed by a sitting governor – would never have approved the new regulations.  The nine McDonnell appointees to the Board approved them, to a person.  The regulations themselves would never have been enacted unless first passed by socially conservative majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate.  And if Gov. McDonnell and State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had been defeated by their pro-abortion rights opponents in the 2009 election, the regulations would have been stultified in a never-land of litigation and/or inaction.

Politics cannot transform culture nor the hearts of those who compose it.  However, politics can encourage public virtue and constrain public evil.  That’s why elections matter.  Bob McDonnell and his pro-life colleagues in Virginia prove it.

Here is some of the information included in the report:

- PPFA performed a total of 329,445 abortions during this time period.

- PPFA provided 841 adoption referrals during this same time (therefore for every adoption referral there were 391 abortions performed).

- PPFA had a total budget of 1.0482 billion dollars.

- PPFA had an excess of revenue over expenses of 18.5 million dollars (in other words, this billion dollar non-profit organizations profited 18.5 million during that time).

- 46 percent of the total PPFA budget comes from tax payer dollars in the form of government funding.

I encourage you to take time to read through the report in its entirety at: http://issuu.com/actionfund/docs/ppfa_financials_2010_122711_web_vf?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage.

The CDC has reported on abortion-related data annually since 1969. Generally these reports are very helpful and informative in terms of tracking and understanding larger trends and actual numbers related to abortion in the United States. The 2008 report is dense with information ranging from the ethnic background and age of the mother to the age of the baby when aborted, as well as the kind of abortion that took place. However, because states are not required to provide abortion data to the CDC, while the surveillance report offers important information and numbers about abortion in the U.S., it does not provide a complete and thorough depiction of abortion data in the U.S. By way of background, until 1998, every state annually reported abortion-related data to the CDC. But beginning in 1998, combinations of states began to refuse to submit abortion-related information to the CDC. Over the years non-reporting states have included California (1998-2008), New Hampshire (1998-2008), Oklahoma (1998-1999), Alaska (1998-2002), West Virginia (2003-2004), Louisiana (2005), and most recently, Maryland (2007-2008). Missing any state’s information is problematic, but in particular, because California has the most abortions in the U.S., not including their data significantly skews the overall picture.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that states that do submit data to the CDC may pick and choose which information they provide. “…the level of detail that CDC receives on the characteristics of women obtaining abortions varies considerably from year to year and among reporting areas….because the collection of abortion data is not federally mandated, reporting areas can develop their own forms and do not necessarily collect all of the information that CDC compiles.” (page 2) Since the CDC’s abortion surveillance reports have incomplete numbers, policy-makers and other interested groups and people must rely on the Guttmacher Institute’s statistics and analysis. However, research neutrality comes into question because Guttmacher was originally founded as the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, although they have since formally separated.

The CDC report reads “CDC is unable to obtain the total number of abortions performed in the United States. During 1999–2008, the total annual number of abortions recorded by CDC was 65%–69% of the number recorded by the Guttmacher Institute, which uses numerous active follow-up techniques to increase the completeness of the data obtained through its periodic national survey of abortion providers.” (page 6)  

Also as reported last year, the report is again missing the abortion fatality rate. Page 5 reads, “Although national case-fatality rates (the number of abortion-related deaths per 100,000 reported legal induced abortions) have been published for 1972–1997, this measure could not be calculated with CDC data for 1998–2007; because a substantial number of abortions have been documented in states that did not report to CDC during 1998-2007.”

One might consider that most statistical conclusions in the abortion surveillance reports since 1998 lacked some form of U.S. data. Therefore the claim that the abortion rate can not be estimated as other statistics have been does not appear to be reasonable. It would seem that the abortion rate should be able to be computed with the same limited information obtained by the states that other statistics are computed. The report has also not updated its latest abortion-related deaths from the previous report (with 2007 data).

Last year it was reported that for the states that reported data, in 2007, six women died in the U.S. as a result of complications related to abortion. (page 5) The updated 2008 number has not yet been released. However, while some information is missing, there is still much to be learned from what the data that is included in the report. Below are some basic statistics and numbers on abortion-related information in the U.S. in 2008.  

· More children were aborted in the U.S. (in reporting states) in 2008 than in 2007. “Among the 49 reporting areas that provided data for 2008, a total of 825,564 abortions were reported.” (page 3) In 2007, the total number of abortions as reported by the CDC was 810,582, an increase of close to 15,000.

· Most abortions were performed on women in their 20s. “Women aged 20-29 years accounted for the majority (57.1%) of all abortions in 2008. In 2008, women aged 20-29 years also had the highest abortion rates (29.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 20-24 years and 21.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 25-29 years).” (page 3)

· The report states that the majority of abortions are performed early in pregnancy. “For 2008, the majority (62.8%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and 91.4% were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.” (Page 4) Few abortions (7.3%) were performed at 14-20 weeks’ gestation, and 1.3% were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation. (page 4)

· In 2008, approximately 14.6% of women used RU-486, the dangerous abortion drug, and that approximately 75.9% of abortions
were surgical (“curettage”) for abortion done at 13 weeks or earlier. (page 4)

· Non-Hispanic black women accounted for 35.5% of all abortion while making up approximately only 12.6% of the population according to the Census Bureau); Hispanic women accounted for 21.1% of all abortion, while making up 16.3% of the population according to the Census Bureau. Non-Hispanic white women accounted for 37.2% of abortions, while making up 72.4% of the population according to the Census Bureau.  (page 4)   The CDC annual abortion surveillance reports are very informative and helpful, albeit incomplete, to those interested in women’s health – both those women who are born, and those women (and men, too) who are unborn.