Abortions worldwide this year:
Definition: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus, resulting in or caused by its death. An abortion can occur spontaneously due to complications during pregnancy or can be induced. (definition from Wikipedia)
Abortion as a term most commonly – and in the statistics presented here – refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy, while spontaneous abortions are usually termed miscarriages.
“This year” refers to the period from Jan 1 at 00:00 up to now.
The data on abortions displayed on the Worldometer’s counter is based on the latest statistics on worldwide abortions published by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day.
In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion, there are over 3,000 abortions per day. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the USA (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.
References and useful links:
- Abortion (Wikipedia)
- World Health Organization (WHO) – Statistics by the World Health Organization
- [1] Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Disparities in rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2006, 38(2):90–96.
- [2] Jones RK et al., Abortion in the United States: incidence and access to services, 2005, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2008, 40(1):6–16
Unintended pregnancy and abortion are experiences shared by people around the world. These reproductive health outcomes occur irrespective of country income level, region or the legal status of abortion.
Roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019.*
Of these unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-worldwide
“Around 56 million abortions are performed each year in the world, with about 45% done unsafely. Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for at least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased. As of 2018, 37% of the world’s women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason. Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed.” Wikipedia
With how I read it above, there are 120 million deaths world wide and 56 million of those are due to abortion! That is remarkably sad. Even many Democrats are against abortion as you read below.
Democrats for Life urge DNC to change party platform on abortion
BY GABBY BIRENBAUM – 08/14/20 09:00 AM “The Hill”
© Stefani Reynolds
More than 100 Democrats affiliated with the anti-abortion group Democrats for Life have signed a letter urging the party to change its abortion stance in this year’s platform.
Signatories include Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, Rep. Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (Ill.), who lost his March primary to a progressive. Fifty-six state legislators also signed the letter addressed to the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee.
The letter urges the Democratic Party to adopt the abortion language from its 2000 platform, which recognized differences of opinion on abortion as a “source of strength” and welcomed Americans of all abortion stances.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The letter argues that the party’s embrace of abortion rights will alienate voters, particularly in battleground states.
“We should not cede large swathes of the United States to the Republican Party,” the letter reads. “In the US, pro-life Democrats have been a critical part of the coalition to expand voting rights, improve health care, and pass criminal justice reform. These accomplishments would not have been possible if the Democratic Party had in place a litmus test on abortion.”
The 2020 Democratic platform, which was released last month and will be voted on and formally approved by Democratic National Committee (DNC) members at next week’s virtual convention, unequivocally supports abortion rights.
“Like the majority of Americans, Democrats believe that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion,” the draft platform reads.
In the draft, Democrats also commit to restoring federal funding for Planned Parenthood, opposing state laws that limit abortion rights, repealing the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion services, and codifying the Roe v. Wade court case that provides a legal defense of abortion. https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Friday’s letter, however, calls for the party to abandon language supporting the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and codification of Roe v. Wade.
“As Democrats, we are anti-Trump and enthusiastic supporters of Black Lives Matter,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, said in a statement Friday. “Why is dismembering preborn children the hill we want to die on when so much is at stake? We took this issue for granted in 2016, and Hillary Clinton lost. We cannot make this mistake again.”
The letter is unlikely to affect the party’s platform. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden last year said he supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid coverage of abortion. Biden had previously supported Hyde for several decades.
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), has been a staunch defender of abortion rights. She has a 100 percent voting record according to NARAL Pro-Choice America, which scores members of Congress based on their votes on abortion rights issues.
A 2019 Pew Research study found that 70 percent of those who identify as or lean Democrat support the party’s position on abortion.
The Truth About Abortion
Reverence for Life
By Russell M. Nelson Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
“As sons and daughters of God, we cherish life as a gift from him.
A heavy toll on life is included among the evils of war. Data from all nations are appalling. For the United States of America, one hundred thousand were killed in World War I; over four hundred thousand died in World War II. In the first two hundred years as a nation, the lives of over one million Americans were lost due to war.
Regrettable as is the loss of loved ones from war, these figures are dwarfed by the toll of a new war that annually claims more casualties than the total number of fatalities from all the wars of this nation.
It is a war on the defenseless—and the voiceless. It is a war on the unborn.
This war, labeled “abortion,” is of epidemic proportion and is waged globally. Over fifty-five million abortions were reported worldwide in the year 1974 alone.1 Sixty-four percent of the world’s population now live in countries that legally sanction this practice.2 In the United States of America, over 1.5 million abortions are performed annually.3 About 25–30 percent of all pregnancies now end in abortion.4 In some metropolitan areas, there are more abortions performed than live births.5 Comparable data also come from other nations.
What sense of inconsistency can allow people to grieve for their dead, yet be calloused to this baleful war being waged on life at the time of its silent development? What logic would encourage efforts to preserve the life of a critically ill twelve-week-old infant, but countenance the termination of another life twelve weeks after inception? More attention is seemingly focused on the fate of a life at some penitentiary’s death row than on the millions totally deprived of life’s opportunity through such odious carnage before birth…
The Lord has repeatedly declared this divine imperative: “Thou shalt not kill.”6 Recently he added, “Nor do anything like unto it.” (D&C 59:6.) Even before the fulness of the gospel was restored, the enlightened understood the sanctity of life. John Calvin, the sixteenth-century reformer, wrote: “If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”7
But what impropriety could now legalize that which has been forbidden by the laws of God from the dawn of time? What twisted reasoning has transformed mythical concepts into contorted slogans assenting to a practice which is consummately wrong?
These slogans begin with proper concern for the health of the mother. Infrequently, instances may occur in which the continuation of pregnancy could be life-threatening to the mother. When deemed by competent medical authorities that the life of one must be terminated in order to save the life of the other, many agree that it is better to spare the mother. But these circumstances are rare, particularly where modern medical care is available.
Another sympathetic concern applies to pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. The tragedy of this despoilment is compounded because, in such relationships, freedom of choice is denied the woman who is innocently involved.
But less than 3 percent of all abortions are performed for these two reasons. The other 97 percent are performed for what may be termed “reasons of convenience.”
Some argue for abortion because a malformed child may result. The harmful effects of certain infectious or toxic agents in the first trimester of pregnancy are real…
The woman’s choice for her own body does not validate choice for the body of another. The expression “terminate the pregnancy” applies literally only to the woman. The consequence of terminating the fetus therein involves the body and very life of another. These two individuals have separate brains, separate hearts, and separate circulatory systems. To pretend that there is no child and no life there is to deny reality.
It is not a question of when “meaningful life” begins or when the spirit “quickens” the body. In the biological sciences, it is known that life begins when two germ cells unite to become one cell, bringing together twenty-three chromosomes from both the father and from the mother. These chromosomes contain thousands of genes. In a marvelous process involving a combination of genetic coding by which all the basic human characteristics of the unborn person are established, a new DNA complex is formed. A continuum of growth results in a new human being. The onset of life is not a debatable issue, but a fact of science…
Approximately twenty-two days after the two cells have united, a little heart begins to beat. At twenty-six days the circulation of blood begins.9
Scripture declares that the “life of the flesh is in the blood.” (Lev. 17:11.) Abortion sheds that innocent blood.
Now, as a servant of the Lord, I dutifully warn those who advocate and practice abortion that they incur the wrath of Almighty God, who declared, “If men … hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, … he shall be surely punished.” (Ex. 21:22.)
Of those who shed innocent blood, a prophet declared: “The judgments which [God] shall exercise … in his wrath [shall] be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.” (Alma 14:11.)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has consistently opposed the practice of abortion. One hundred years ago the First Presidency wrote: “And we again take this opportunity of warning the Latter-day Saints against those … practices of foeticide and infanticide…
Now, is there hope for those who have so sinned without full understanding, who now suffer heartbreak? Yes. So far as is known, the Lord does not regard this transgression as murder. And “as far as has been revealed, a person may repent and be forgiven for the sin of abortion.”13 Gratefully, we know the Lord will help all who are truly repentant… Russell M Nelson April 1985 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1985/04/reverence-for-life?lang=eng
May the world and especially the United Stated of America repent of this evil called abortion and may we respect all life. How can anyone who claims to be of the Lords side, be for taking the life of another. Scoffers may say about Biden, “Yea but he believes in other good things”, or “I can’t justify voting for Trump”, or “But Trump is a liar”, etc. If you vote for Biden it is my personal opinion that you are voting that abortion, even late-term abortion is ok by you. It is reprehensible.
