On this day . . .
We mourn more than 62.5 million lives violently taken, their remains casually discarded.
We shoulder the pain of their mothers who were told they had no option.
We grieve alongside fathers who never knew of their child or were told they had no rights.
We forgive seven Supreme Court justices, blind to the inalienable right to life of preborn American citizens. These men couldn’t have known the evil they would unleash, on this day . . .
We stand determined (“Keep your chin up,” my dad used to say). We will illuminate the truth, speak the science of life, devise ways to help our women in need and protect their unborn children.
On this day . . .
You and I have been called to care. We have heard the call loud and clear, because that’s how our movement works! That’s how love works. You can’t turn away from this movement, because you’d be walking away from love.
So, how will you respond, on this day?
Me? I will continue to set an example for my four children. I will learn what I need to know to teach them and plant my feet firmly, because they will test me, as kids do. I will seek God's grace to meet inevitable opposition from adults and shine the light of truth on the paths they walk. I will offer a prayer of thanksgiving for my predecessors and colleagues at Massachusetts Citizens for Life, who, on January 23, 1973, established the cornerstone of the Commonwealth’s pro-life movement. I will offer a prayer for the thousands, who, year after year, followed their lead to defend innocent life. And I will pray for you and all you will do to save a life . . . on this day.
Is our work making a difference? Without a doubt! The numbers reveal that we are, indeed, gaining ground in our fight to defend human life. The excerpt below is taken from the 2020 State of Abortion report, published by National Right to Life Committee each January. Thank you for your continued support and heroic efforts to build a culture of life.
Peace to you, on this day.
Myrna
As a result of our analysis of data from both Guttmacher through 2017, and the CDC through 2018, and estimating figures for subsequent years (2017-2020), National Right to Life estimates that 62,504,904 abortions have been performed in the United States since 1973
In 2016, all the statistics measuring abortion — the raw number, the abortion rate, and the abortion ratio — reached historic lows. Numbers for 2017 continued to offer encouraging all time lows in all three categories. For example, the number of abortions counted by the CDC decreased to 612,719. In 2018, the CDC found slight increases yet there were still fewer abortions than in 2016. Looking at the big picture, if you compare the CDC abortion for 2008 (825,564) to the CDC total for 2018 (619,591), the number has dropped by nearly 25 percent in a just a decade.
As always with the CDC, we offer the important caveat that its numbers significantly underestimate the actual national totals. There is no data from California, New Hampshire, and Maryland, which the CDC admits, using data from Guttmacher, would otherwise account for nearly one out of every five abortions performed in the U.S.
Any way one looks at it, abortion has become a less common feature of American women’s lives. Though the size of the population has increased, fewer women are having abortions. The bottom line is that the likelihood of a pregnant woman choosing to abort her baby has dropped considerably. And that is an enormous tribute to the faithful work of the pro-life community.