According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood):
- There are 1.3 million abortions performed in America every year.
- From 1973 to 1996, more than 34 million legal abortions have been performed.
- One in four pregnancies end in abortion.
Abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason. (The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade ruled that even in the third trimester, after viability, a state cannot limit abortion unless it makes exceptions to preserve the life and "health" of the woman seeking abortion. In Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe, the Supreme Court defines "health" to mean "all factors" that affect the woman, including "physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age.")
The American People support reasonable restrictions on abortion:
A May 1999 CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll found:
Planned Parenthood opposes even modest restrictions to limit abortion, such as:
- Opposes parental notification or consent when a minor child seeks an abortion. [read details]
- Opposes a ban on partial birth abortion, which kills the child in the very process of being born. [read details]
Planned Parenthood is opposed to parental notification or consent laws when a minor child seeks an abortion.
The vast majority of Americans support the right of parents to be involved in -- or at least be aware of -- their minor daughter's abortion decision. Only the most extreme proponents of abortion would think otherwise.
Like Planned Parenthood.
Americans consistently and overwhelmingly support parental notification and/or consent.
A 1998 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 78 percent of Americans support parental consent before an abortion is performed on a girl under age 18, and even higher support for parental notification.
New York Times/CBS News, 1998
A 1992 national poll by the Wirthlin Group found that 80 percent of Americans support requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a girl under age 18.
Wirthlin Group, 1992
Even young people support parental consent laws. Of the 18-24 year olds surveyed, more than two-thirds (68%) say they support policies requiring girls under 18 to get a parent's consent for abortion.
Princeton Survey Research Associates, July 5-17, 2000
Just as consistently, Planned Parenthood opposes parental notification and parental consent laws.
Only the most extreme abortion proponent would further support the so-called "right" of adults to take other parents' minor children across state lines for an abortion, without the parent's knowledge, and in violation of the home state parental notification or consent laws - even when this is done to cover up evidence of criminal activity, such as statutory rape.
Like Planned Parenthood.
Imagine finding your 13 year old daughter in severe pain and bleeding, abandoned and alone 30 miles from home. Now imagine that she was in that situation because she had been raped. The stepmother of the rapist took your daughter, without your even knowing it, to an out of state abortion clinic to cover up evidence of the crime. This is exactly what happened to one mother and her minor child from Pennsylvania.
Congress introduced legislation, the Child Custody Protection Act, to prevent such horrible abuses of children. Eighty-five percent of Americans agreed: it is wrong for an adult to take a minor across state lines for an abortion, without the parent's knowledge and in violation of home state parental involvement laws.
Planned Parenthood disagreed with the American people. Referring to it as a "dangerous barrier to safe abortion," Planned Parenthood fought against the Child Custody Protection Act. Planned Parenthood actually branded as "harmful" this effort to prevent an adult from taking another parent's child across state lines for a secret abortion, saying it would "curtail women's access to legal abortion even as it would attempt to legislate forced communication among families"
(Planned Parenthood press release 6/30/99.)
Planned Parenthood opposes a ban on Parial Birth Abortion, which kills the child in the very process of being born. While such a gruesome procedure - performed in the second and third trimester - is never medically necessary, and can even be dangerous for women, Planned Parenthood called the narrowly tailored ban "sweeping" and referred to it as a "hateful piece of legislation."
(Planned Parenthood press release, 10/21/99).
The overwhelming majority of the American people oppose Partial Birth Abortion. Seven out of 10 Americans agree it should be banned. (Gallup, July, 1996; Tarrance Group National Survey, 12/95 and 8/96).Congress twice voted to ban Parial Birth Abortion, and 30 states passed their own bans. The American Medical Association supported efforts to have it banned and said that Partial Birth Abortion "is not good medicine."
(AMA Letter to Senator Rick Santorum, May 19, 1997).
Map of US, indicates states which have passed legislation to ban Partial Birth Abortion.
Planned Parenthood disagreed with the American people. Planned Parenthood fought for the continued availability of this brutal procedure.
Partial Birth Abortion has frequently been likened to outright infanticide - and for good reason. In a Parial Birth Abortion, the abortionist delivers the living child breech (feet first) until only the head remains in the mother. An instrument, usually scissors, is then used to pierce the skull; the wound is opened and a catheter inserted to vacuum out the brain. The skull collapses and delivery of the now dead child is complete. These usually take place in mid-second trimester, although they are also performed in the third trimester as well.
Doctors overwhelmingly agreed that this brutal procedure was never medically necessary to protect a woman's life, health or future fertility. But to protect Parial Birth Abortion, Planned Parenthood falsely insisted it was used only rarely, and only in cases when a woman's life or health was at extreme risk. To protect Parial Birth Abortion, Planned Parenthood also falsely declared that the child dies in utero, even before the abortion actually begins, from anesthesia given to the mother: "The fetus dies of an overdose of anesthesia given to the mother intravenously."
(Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet: "HR 1833, Medical Questions and Answers")
However, Dr. Norig Ellison, President of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and Dr. David Chestnut, Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Alabama, both testified before Congress that such a claim had "no basis in scientific fact." Further, both doctors expressed serious concern that such misinformation had the effect of putting pregnant women at risk, as some began putting off needed medical procedures for fear that anesthesia given to them would hurt or kill their unborn child.
(Oversight Hearing: U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, "'Fetal Death' or Dangerous Deception? The Effects of Anesthesia During a Partial-Birth Aboriton" 3/21/96)