30,000 BABIES ABORTED IN PENNSYLVANIA IN 2017; MOST ABORTIVE MOTHERS UNWED
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
HARRISBURG, Pa. — 30,011 babies were aborted in Pennsylvania in 2017, a new report
from the Pennsylvania Department of Health outlines. The vast majority of women
obtaining the abortions were unwed.
The figure is slightly down from the year prior, during which 30,881 children in the
Commonwealth lost their lives, but is stated to be a record low.
According to the report, over 87 percent of those who aborted their
child last year were unmarried, or 26,310 women. Nearly 39 percent of
those women were age 24 or younger.
Most of the abortions—83.6 percent—were performed in five counties in
the Commonwealth: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Dauphin, Delaware and
Northampton.
A chart based on residency shows that the least number of abortions
were performed on women from Bradford, Sullivan, Fulton, Susquehanna,
Tioga, Cameron and Forest counties, which had five or fewer abortions
listed.
143 women experienced complications from their abortion, with the
most common complication being “retained products of conception,”
meaning that parts of (or all of) the dead baby had been left inside of
the woman. 102 of the 143 women were listed under this complication.
48 complications were from pill-based abortions, and 33 were suction
curettage abortions, the latter of which rips the baby from the womb via
vacuum-like pressure.
Suction curettage was the most commonly used abortion method overall,
with 16,879 babies dying by the surgical procedure, and 11,496 babies
being killed by the abortion pill. 1,627 babies died by dilation and
evacuation, also known as dismemberment abortion.
Over 18,000 of the babies were eight weeks gestation or less, and
over 1,000 babies were between 18-23 weeks gestation, or four and a half
to nearly six months gestation.
More than half—52.8 percent—of the mothers had never obtained an
abortion before, while 7,786 women had previously aborted a child and
3,776 obtained their third abortion. 1,082 mothers had aborted four or
more of their children before their 2017 abortion.
“[A]bortion totals in Pennsylvania would be much higher were it not
for the caring pregnancy resource centers administered by Real
Alternatives and other groups,” Maria Gallagher, legislative director
for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, remarked to the Daily Local
News. “These life-affirming organizations provide everything from
diapers to daycare referrals, along with comprehensive counseling to
pregnant women.”
As previously reported, Pennsylvania had been an influential state in
American history in the fight against abortion. In 1850, Pennsylvania’s
Supreme Court became the first high court in the nation to declare that
abortion must be prohibited at any stage of gestation for any reason.
While other state courts allowed preborn babies to be aborted up to
four months of gestation by reason of a “quickening” theory, which
stated that a person was not protected until the mother felt them
kicking in the womb, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would accept no such
argument.
In Mills v. Commonwealth, the court declared that the theory
“is not … the law in Pennsylvania, and ought never to have been the law
anywhere.” The ruling became a strong precedent that other state courts
began to review and follow.
By the 1900’s, due to the influence of the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court, nearly every state in the nation prohibited abortion for any
reason, with the exception of Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina.
