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There have been no national figures published beyond 2000. Setting aside for the moment the question of whether the sixteen states Stassen uses to support his claim of a reversed national trend are representative of the country as a whole, Stassen’s case falls apart when one attempts to confirm the data he has reported.

Stassen lists South Dakota and Wisconsin as two places where abortions increased from 2001 to 2002. Figures from those state health departments show abortions decreased in both states during that time frame.

Stassen lists Illinois as another state where abortions increased from 2001 to 2002. State records do confirm a slight increase for 2002, but then a drop of 10% for 2003, indicating that 2002 was probably just an aberration in a long term downward trend.

With those three states shifting from the increase to the decrease column, Stassen’s claim that abortions have increased in 11 out of 16 states now turns into a 8 to 8 tie, with as many states decreasing as increasing. Hardly anything definitive.

Stassen reports large increases in four of the 16 states above – Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, and Michigan. While state data do record a significantly higher number of abortions in these states for 2002 than in 2001, officials from at least two of the states with the highest reported increases caution against seeing this as evidence of any real increase.

In Arizona, where Stassen reported a 26.4% increase, the state Department of Health Services cautioned in its report that “It is unclear whether this increase in the number of reported abortions represents a true increase in the actual number of abortions performed, or, perhaps, a better response rate of providers of non-surgical (so called medical) terminations of pregnancy.”

State officials in Colorado, where Stassen reported an astronomical 67.4% one year increase, recently revamped their reporting regimen to address underreporting, and sent a note to abortion “providers” reminding them that reporting was required in Colorado. The state said they expected an increase in reports, and declared, “No one could or should conclude that this anticipated increase in the rate of reported terminations reflects an increase in the true rate.”

Stassen doesn’t report these caveats. But if state officials are reluctant to say their data indicates real increases, they don’t belong on Stassen’s list of states with more abortions. That would leave just 6 increasing versus 8 decreasing states, the opposite of what Stassen claims. Stassen’s case falls apart.
Stassen’s thesis that abortion increases can be linked to job losses and other economic factors doesn’t even hold up to his own data.

While some states where Stassen said abortions increased also saw increases in their unemployment rates over those same years, there are also plenty of counter-examples. Illinois’s abortions dropped substantially between 2002 and 2003, in spite of its unemployment rate being stuck at 6.7%, among the worst in the nation. Ohio’s unemployment rate rose considerably relative to most other states, but abortions there declined. If the economic determinism Stassen assumes was valid, those state results would be reversed.

Stassen presents himself as someone sympathetic to the pro-life cause who was shocked and saddened to find out that our pro-life president’s policies were not having the pro-life effects he anticipated. That persona is misleading.

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