We are now approaching the six month mark since the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision in Roe, and delivered to the people the obligation to debate the issue of abortion and to elect their leaders to make the laws under which they will live. It is well to examine what the impact has been. Indeed, experiences are different around the various states. Some states are restricting or outlawing abortion while others are developing an abortion tourism business. Some legislators are even advocating neonaticide.

At the same time that pregnancy help centers have geared up to meet increased requests for help, especially in states where abortion is illegal, pro-abortion advocates have attacked such entities as deceiving, dangerous, and harmful to women, pointing out that they “severely limit the choices of women” by not offering abortions. On that front, it has become a battle, on the one hand, to get women into these pregnancy help centers so their needs can be determined and met, and on the other hand, to get women to refuse help and seek ways to have an abortion. Ironically, pro-abortion advocates offer only that one choice.

It is worth noting that one small study demonstrated that 76% of women who had an abortion said they would have kept their baby “if circumstances were different.” The mission of pregnancy help centers is to do just that– help each mother obtain all the resources she needs so that circumstances prevail to help her choose life for her baby. In those cases where the mother just cannot keep the baby after birth, there are about 36 couples wanting to adopt for every one baby that is available for adoption.

Whereas, in areas where abortion is illegal, women have flocked to pregnancy centers in increased numbers, in many areas, the increase was modest, if any. In communities where households have lower income and less education, nearly 75% know nothing about pregnancy help centers. Desperate women began to buy abortion pills off the streets (sometimes counterfeits). Others obtained pills mailed from out of state after a Skype visit at a Planned Parenthood office, and even from overseas resources by internet sales…often taking the pills without an ultrasound exam or the advice of a doctor, thus often harming themselves and requiring emergency visits to a hospital.

Some women with more advanced stages of pregnancy are leaving states where abortion is prohibited to get a surgical abortion, and Planned Parenthood has established RV’s as mobile abortion clinics across the border from such states. Boats are also taking women off-shore and performing abortions up to 20 weeks without recording the names of the women or any other details.  Such women have no recourse except the emergency department of a hospital when they suffer complications.

There are also a number of new web sites promoting “Plan C”… advising women of different ways they can get access to abortion pills. The use of abortion pills has been on the rise for quite some time. Earlier detection of pregnancy has made those substances very popular. More educated and affluent women are now choosing more often the “morning after pill,” such as the substance called Plan B, to prevent pregnancy after spontaneous sex with no contraceptive plan or if their method seems to have failed.

With increased use of abortion pills, there has been a parallel increase in regrets at having done so. This has given rise to an increasingly larger cadre of abortion pill reversal doctors. Whereas that treatment is not always successful, depending on a variety of factors, but especially dependent on how long since the first pill was taken, it is reported that over 4,000 pregnancies have been saved in the last six months.

It is hard to know whether the overall number of abortions in the United States has decreased in the last six months. There is no standard requirement for reporting, and many abortions are now “self-managed” by use of abortion pills. It is felt that there has been a modest decrease, but it has also been observed that every life has value and that every life saved is important.

Those who support abortion seemingly want women to have an abortion as a matter of exercising a “right,” such as to vote, rather than to explore alternatives in the context of difficult life situations. In their view, those who offer alternatives to abortion and help women to overcome real and imagined reasons why they cannot have a baby are threatening women’s rights in all areas of life. Such short-sighted assessment neglects the overall impact of abortion on mothers and fathers, grandparents and extended families that never were because the baby was killed in the womb.

The only thing that every person in the respect life movement is certain about is that there is much work to be done in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the public. Part of that effort must be placed on educating women about pregnancy help centers and all of the resources available to them.

The other way we can reduce the number of abortions in the United States is to eliminate the ills in our society that lead to the dire circumstances women encounter which cause them to contemplate abortion. It is without dispute that this will be a long, difficult, and controversial task. However, only by doing so will abortion someday become almost unthinkable.