Will 1 in 3 women have an abortion?

Abortion advocacy organizations often say that 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime. In fact, a whole campaign is based on that statistic.

But it’s not accurate. Secular Pro-Life has put together a new website, Not1in3.com. The website explains:

The study most activist groups cite in order to justify the “1 in 3″ statistic is Changes in Abortion Rates Between 2000 and 2008 and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion, published in 2011 by Dr. Rachel K. Jones and Dr. Megan L. Kavanaugh. … The lifetime abortion rate given by the study is approximately 3 in 10, not 1 in 3. But the authors caution us that even the lower figure of 3 in 10 may be overstated …

Moreover, given the recent declining abortion numbers, the 30 percent figure is clearly obsolete:

Abortion statistics are always a few years behind. That’s why the Jones & Kavanaugh study, which was published in 2011, contained an analysis of data only as recent as 2008. It wasn’t until three years after the study was published that reliable numbers were available through 2011. In 2014, Dr. Jones revealed the stunning news: between 2008 and 2011, abortion rates plummeted to the lowest level recorded since Roe v. Wade.

The 2011 study’s prediction that 3 in 10 American women would have an abortion came with an important caveat; it only applied if American women were “exposed to prevailing abortion rates throughout their reproductive lives.” There were almost 165,000 fewer abortions in 2011 than there were in 2008.

The positive trend shows no signs of stopping. Although reliable post-2011 abortion statistics are not yet available, we know that dozens of abortion businesses across the country have closed in the last three years due to a combination of decreased demand and pro-life legislation.

So it is likely that significantly fewer than 1 in 3 women will have an abortion.

Of course, more than a million abortions still occur in the United States each year—it is the leading cause of human death. But the prevalence of abortion should not lead us to accept it, as abortion advocates apparently think. It should lead us to work to protect the unborn, meet the needs of pregnant women, and care for those who have been detrimentally affected by abortion—so that the impact of abortion in American culture will continue to diminish.