By L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
March 22, 2023
The Guttmacher Institute released its U.S. abortion report for 2023 this past week, and the numbers are devastating. An estimated 1,026,690 babies killed in the womb, up 10 percent since 2020. Some 44,700 of those took place in North Carolina, which is 12,970 more than in 2020.
“In North Carolina, the proportion of abortions provided to patients traveling from out of state increased from 17 percent in 2020 to 35 percent in 2023,” the Institute reported. It’s estimated that 10,400 more people came to North Carolina for abortion last year, as compared to 2020.
Increased travel from out of state accounted for 80 percent of North Carolina’s overall increase. Some 15,910 abortions in 2023 were performed on patients who traveled to the Tar Heel state for the procedure. The highest months for abortions in North Carolina were March and June, with a significant decrease in July when the state enacted a ban on most abortions 12 weeks into pregnancy.
Abortions rose in September, but the last six months of the year averaged significantly fewer abortions than before the July law change. Almost every state that did not enact a total abortion ban saw an average increase of 25 percent in the number of abortions from 2020, according to Guttmacher. The biggest increase – 37 percent – was in states bordering those with bans.
Medication abortions
According to the Guttmacher report, nearly two thirds (63 percent) of the more than a million babies aborted across the nation last year lost their lives to the deadly combination of mifepristone and misoprostol in so-called “medication abortions,” up from 53 percent in 2020.
Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of mifepristone in 2000, medication abortion has risen steadily. In 2021, during the Covid pandemic, the FDA lifted in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone, allowing it to be mailed directly to patient homes. And its use is expected to rise even more as CVS and Walgreens have begun selling mifepristone in five states (New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois) and announced they will expand its access anywhere that abortion remains unrestricted.
The Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, called the increase in abortions, particularly those involving medication taken by mothers at home alone, appalling.
“A chemical abortion is a two-step process that brutally destroys the life of an unborn baby. The first pill taken by the mother starves a developing baby from the nutrients it needs for life; the second pill is meant to produce contractions that will expel the dead baby from the mother’s uterus,” Creech explained. He referenced the 2019 motion picture “Unplanned,” a biographical drama based on the life of Abbey Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who became a pro-life activist. In the movie, there is a scene depicting a medical abortion where a young woman experiences extreme cramping and bleeding in the shower, leading to the gruesome expulsion of her baby.
“The scene serves to highlight the graphic nature and potential complications associated with abortions precipitated by using mifepristone,” Creech said. “While it is true that this is not the experience of everyone who has such an abortion, nonetheless, it does accurately show what can happen.”
Watch the scene from “Unplanned” here.
Creech pointed out that when a mother purchases an abortion pill like mifepristone, she isn’t likely to have had any labs, tests or exams that would rule out an ectopic pregnancy or to confirm gestational age, blood type or other vital information.
“Having a prescription doesn’t necessarily make the abortion safe. This kind of an abortion destroys the life of a human being and also puts the life of the mother at risk, both physically and emotionally,” Creech said. “One look at this information from the National Library of Medicine shows the range of potential complications. For many, these dangerous abortions are performed at home, without medical supervision, and alone. This is appalling!”
Creech urged CAL supporters to be in prayer over the issue as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments regarding access to mifepristone on Tuesday.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided in August 2023 to put back into place safeguards on the drug’s delivery and distribution that the FDA had removed during the pandemic. Politico has called the hearing, part of a suit filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, “one of the highest-stakes and closest-watched cases of the term.” The Supreme Court won’t likely issue a ruling until June.