Good News!

Isn’t it fun to celebrate when good things happen? For pro-life Americans, June has seen a handful of victories, including two just this week.

First, the Associated Press announced on Monday, June 8 that they recently conducted a survey of available abortion-related data in most states since 2010. The consensus? Abortions are on the decrease (by 12% overall) in the United States! Read the full story HERE.

The best analysis I’ve seen of the survey is an article by Dr. Michael New who is cautiously optimistic about the decline but makes a necessary point that the U.S. Government does not require state health departments to track and report such data. Therefore, some caution is prudent when considering the decline.

“Some context: One important caveat that received little attention in the article is that abortion data from state health departments can be unreliable. Abortion reporting standards vary greatly across states. Sometimes reported decreases are caused by less rigorous reporting rather than actual declines in the incidence of abortion. Secondly, the AP piece’s analysis would have been better if it had focused on abortion rates rather than the overall number of abortions, since some of the fluctuations in abortion numbers might have been affected by changes in population or demographics.”

A second piece of uplifting news this week relates to a 2013 Texas pro-life/women’s health law. On Tuesday, most of the law was upheld in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Included in this law is the policy that abortion clinics are held to “ambulatory facility standards,” which means that such clinics are expected to have the same health standards as other outpatient surgical facilities. Frankly, this part of the law should be a “win” not only for those of us working against the human rights abuse of abortion, but also for anyone advocating for women’s health.

Surprisingly, until recently most states did not regulate abortion clinics; they were held to lesser health standards than veterinarian clinics or beauty salons. In the wake of the horrific stories at the clinic of Kermit Gosnell, states began to introduce such laws in large part to further protect women. Sadly, often those who are advocating for abortion equate women’s health with greater access to abortion even if the clinics will be substandard.

For more on both stories, watch this clip where Brian Patrick interviewed me on EWTN News Nightly.