Abortion

Were Ten Percent Of All Abortions In Nebraska Later Term?

Anti-choice activists commend the "fetal pain" ban for dropping the abortion rate in 2010.

Congratulations, Nebraska!  You have reported 10 percent fewer abortions in 2010 than in 2009.  And according to the anti-abortion activists, it’s all because of the 20 week abortion ban.

Via Lifenews:

Nebraska Right to Life thinks this ten percent decline is a result of the ban on late abortions based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children feel excruciating pain during an abortion at that point in pregnancy. The ban prompted late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart to largely abandon his Nebraska abortion business and move to Maryland, where he is doing abortions in Germantown, a suburb of the nation’s capital.

“While we will need to see from DHHS the numbers of abortions done in Lancaster, Douglas and Sarpy Counties for those months in each year; it is clear that LeRoy Carhart taking his late term abortion business to Maryland probably has a lot to do with this ten percent decline in abortions in Nebraska,” Julie Schmit-Albin, the executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, told LifeNews. “Legislation does save lives and Carhart admitted when LB 1103 was enacted last fall that he would be forced by the law to do late term abortions out of the State. He is now spending a significant amount of time in Germantown, Maryland doing late term abortions.”

“Once all the statistics are in for 2011 we will be able to gauge just how large Carhart’s late term business was in Nebraska,” she added. “We will continue to work to pass life-saving state laws that buck up against Roe v. Wade.”

It should be interesting to see how “big” it really was.  According to the 2010 state abortions statistics, there was only one abortion at 20 weeks or later reported, even though the ban itself didn’t go into effect until October.  The data from 2009 is missing, but 2008  shows no abortions past 20 weeks, and 2007 just four.

Of course, the vast majority of the abortions recorded in the Nebraska statistics do not report the gestational age.  But if anti-choice activists are going to use these statistics to somehow prove that later term abortion is a vast and growing problem, it seems only fair to point out they have no evidence to support it.