Abortions up slightly in 2008

According to the Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood's former research arm) there were 1,212,350 abortions in 2008 compared to 1,206,200 in 2005.

After dropping for more than a decade, the U.S. abortion rate has begun to rise slightly, according to an extensive new survey of providers by the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute.

The increase was just 1%, to 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2008, from 19.4 in 2005, the last year captured by the group's previous survey.....

The number of abortion providers remained virtually identical, at 1,793 in 2008 compared with 1,787 in 2005—the first survey since 1982 that showed no decline. The flat result partly reflected a fuller count of certain facilities in California that weren't captured in the 2005 total. Without them, there would have been a 3% drop-off.

Here's a PDF of the study.

The Washington Post has a quote from study author Rachel Jones showing how Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute plan on spinning these results.

"It's kind of a wake-up call that we need to increase access to contraceptives services so we can continue to prevent unintended pregnancies and the decline in abortions can continue again," she said.

Maybe it should go the other way.

For example, "Planned Parenthood's family planning funding has continued to increase over the last few years yet the reduction in unintended pregnancies and abortions has plateaued. That's a wake-up call that continuing to give hundreds of millions of dollars to America's top abortion provider isn't a very smart policy. The decline in abortion will be able to continue again once family planning dollars aren't being funneled to an organization which has a clear conflict of interest."