Great Expectations

A Dying Industry Bleeding Out

Abortion is one of those horrific practices that mean just a few abortions a year are too many.  One abortion a year is too many.  Sacrificing an innocent child for the convenience of its mother or society is reprehensible.  It is a great moral evil.  

But there is no magic switch to transform societies instantly.  Society is made up of millions of hearts and minds.  It is made up of habits, traditions, and institutions which give power, influence and presence to beliefs.  The ultimate beliefs of a society are inevitably enshrined in law codes and practice.  Therefore, to drive abortion out from society, which is our goal, takes time.  It also takes effort on a wide diversity of levels.  It requires that we live with evil for a time whilst the life is choked out of it--metaphorically speaking.  (Our opponents, of course--the pro-aborts--advocate and practise literal murder, literally cutting and choking life out of human beings.)

In the United States there is a growing conviction that abortion is a great evil.  The cause is capturing hearts and minds.  Abortion is a shrinking industry.  Let's hope that what is seen in the United States becomes the harbinger of doom for the abominable practice throughout the West.

This report has come in from Bloomberg, a pro-abort institution:

Abortion access in the U.S. has been vanishing at the fastest annual pace on record, propelled by Republican state lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened.  At no time since before 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, has a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy been more dependent on her zip code or financial resources to travel. The drop-off in providers—more than one every two weeks—occurred in 35 states, in both small towns and big cities that are home to more than 30 million women of reproductive age.

Abortion is having its life blood choked off.  How has this come about?  Like all genuine societal change, it has come about through many means, levels of influence, tactics, and causes.  It is a well spring of life from subterranean levels of society.  It has caught the complicit, condoning elites by surprise.

At least 58 U.S. abortion clinics -- almost 1 in 10 -- have shut or stopped providing the procedure since 2011 as access vanishes faster than ever amid a Republican-led push to legislate the industry out of existence.

A wave of regulations that makes it too expensive or logistically impossible for facilities to remain in business drove at least a third of the closings. Demographic changes, declining demand, industry consolidation, doctor retirements and crackdowns on unfit providers were also behind the drop. More clinics in Texas and Ohio are preparing to shut as soon as next month.

Opponents have tried to stop access to abortion through civil disobedience, blockades and legal action. Clinics were bombed and doctors killed. [Such evils have never been condoned by the anti-abort movement. Ed.]  Now, legislatures are proving to be the most effective tool after Republicans made historic gains in the 2010 elections. Their success is creating one of the biggest shifts in reproductive health care since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalized abortion in all 50 states.

“People who don’t have power protest on the street,” said Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser at Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group based in Wichita, Kansas. “People who have influence work from within to enact change.”  [Bloomberg]

Just 21 new abortion clinics in the US since 2011, whilst 162 existing clinics have closed down.  The lifeblood of the pro-abort industry is bleeding out.  More and more people are becoming deeply uncomfortable with a procedure which kills babies for the convenience of adults.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion factory in the United States.  Even though funded by the Federal Government, even though President Obama publicly thanked God for the work of Planned Parenthood, it is a dying business.

Summit Women’s Center in Bridgeport, Conn., closed in 2015 after 40 years in business, citing reduced demand. In Kalispell, Mont., Susan Cahill said she didn’t have the money to rebuild after her practice got vandalized in 2014. Following the loss of two providers, Missouri is now one of five states in which a sole clinic remains. Of all the facilities in the nation that closed or stopped performing terminations, about a third were operated by Planned Parenthood; of the ones that opened, three-quarters were.

That just 21 new clinics opened in five years underscores the difficulty the industry has faced in replenishing the ranks of health-care providers willing and financially able to operate in such a fraught field. The impact of that challenge is likely to be long-lived: Even rarer than the building of a new clinic is the reopening of one that has shut.

Once Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is cut off, that monstrosity will also bleed out.  In another thirty years, Lord willing, Roe vs Wade will be being discussed in law schools as the monstrosity and the perversion of truth and justice--and the law--that it always has been.