Here's how it happened

Andrew Sullivan can at times be interesting but his latest column on abortion in Time makes me wonder about a few things.

He says, "According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, since 1990 the number of reported legal abortions dropped from 1.4 million a year to 853,000 in 2001. The number of abortions for every 1,000 live births dropped from 344 to 246.

How did this happen? No one is quite sure....."

Gosh Andrew. Did you actually check the stats or read the CDC report? Did you actually ask anyone? Are there editors at Time? Most people who know a thing or two about abortion statistics or who've read the report know that the # of abortions in the CDC's latest report and reports from a few previous years are so much lower because they don't include a couple of states, most notably the most populous state in America - California - where approximately 250,000 abortions take place every year.

Andrew also has trouble understanding why some prolife groups aren't ecstatic about supporting a bill that gives more money to family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood, provides no money to programs that stress abstinence only education and that states emergency contraception does not cause an abortion when no one is really sure if EC does cause abortions or not.

UPDATE: I should add that abortions per year have gone in the last 15 years by approximately 300,000 abortions from 1990 to 2005 due to a combination of things. Prolife legislation, something Sullivan doesn't mention, being a main contributing factor. The national number of abortions in this country has not been below 1 million since the mid-70's.