Glen Stassen, a trained statistician and ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., indicates that there was a net gain in abortions in the United States between 2000 and 2003.
According to the Associate Baptist Press, Stassen explained in an article written for Sojourners magazine that during the 1990s, there was a decline in abortion rates with an average of 17.4 percent compared to previous decades. However, the trend began to change its direction starting in 2000.
In his new statistical analysis, Stassen used data from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and the Tuttmacher Institute. He extrapolated a national rate by performing an analysis on annual abortion reports of 16 states in a period of 3 years, from 2001 to 2003. In those 16 states, Stassen concluded that there was a net gain in abortions between 2000 and 2003.
Stassen selected three states (Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania) to closely analyze the general abortion trends which began in 2001 and ended in 2003. All three showed an increase over the period.
While analyzing the other 13 states with data runnning through 2002, most showed a net increase in the abortion rate with a 14.6 percent on average, even though some states showed an average small decline of 4.3 percent.
At the conclusion of his study, Stassen indicated that 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected had the abortion-rate decrease of the 1990s continued.
Stassen offered an explanation regarding this newly found abortion trend saying economic hardship is for the blame. The downturn of U.S’s economy by the end of the 90s might play an important role causing such a trend.
