Study: Abortions Double in Spain Despite Increased Contraception

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 3, 2011   |   6:55PM   |   Madrid, Spain

The medical journal Contraception has published the results of a new study that appears to refute the pro-abortion mantra that contraception use lowers abortion totals.

The study, following women in Spain of childbearing age since 1997, had researchers surveying women every two years about their contraceptive use and whether they became pregnant or had an abortion.

The study found overall use of contraceptive methods increased from 49.1% to 79.9% during the 10 year time period ending in 2007. Condom usage rates rose from 21 to 38.8 percent while women were more likely to use the birth control pill (14.2% to 20.3%).

Despite the increase reliance on birth control and contraception, the elective abortion rate increased from 5.52 to 11.49 per 1000 women.

“The factors responsible for the increased rate of elective abortion need further investigation,” the authors wrote.

Jill Stanek, a pro-life nurse and blogger, noticed the study and said, “The results were unsurprising. What was laughable was the researchers’ conclusion.”

“Any person with common sense could cue the researchers that the more casual sex one has, the greater likelihood there will be of pregnancy, contraception use notwithstanding,’ Stanek said. “Contraceptive use only provides a false sense of security.”

“As most recently evidenced on the MTV abortion special, minor girls and young women are too immature or irresponsible to handle contraception properly, for starters. Men aren’t so good at it either, since even as the pro-abort group Guttmacher notes, the failure rate of condoms is a whopping 17.4%,” she added.

As the study shows, that makes it clear abortion is being used by women in Spain, and very likely elsewhere around the world, as a method of contraception when the use of contraceptives and birth control pills fail.

The morning after pill has been hailed by abortion advocates as a method of reducing abortions, but stats in the United States and elsewhere prove otherwise.

According to the London Daily Mail, teen pregnancy rates in England are now higher than they were in 1995 and pregnancies among girls under 16, below the age of sexual consent, are also at the highest level since 1998.

That is despite the British government spending £300 million (that’s over $454 million for those of us in the United States) in an attempt to cut the number of teen pregnancies in half by promoting comprehensive sexual education.

The British teen abortion rate, according to the newspaper, has also climbed steadily since 1999 when the government released its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy.

In 2008, officials in Sweden reported that the number of abortions increased 17 percent in Sweden from 2000 to 2007 despite sales of the morning after pill increasing during the same time period.

The morning after pill became a drug that could be sold over the counter in Sweden in 2001. In that time, sales of the drug tripled in the nation’s capital and doubled nationwide.

Still, new national figures show 37,205 abortions in Sweden in 2007, up approximately 17 percent from the 30,980 done in 2000. In Stockholm, 10,259 abortions were done — a 6.9 percent increase in just one year from the 2006 figures.

Meanwhile, last year the number of abortions in Scotland rose for the third straight year despite a heavy push for women to use the morning after pill.

Abortions in Scotland rose four percent according to a report from the British National Health Service and now number 13,703. That increase came after NHS reported 13,081 abortions in 2006, up from 12,603 the previous year — an increase of nearly 3.8 percent.

Not only is the increased promoting of the morning after pill resulting in more abortions, not less, the number of women having repeat abortions is increasing as well.

NHS reports more than a quarter of women, 26.3 percent, who had an abortion in Scotland in 2008 had at least one prior abortion before that. That’s 3,600 women who had one or more abortions prior, according to the government’s statistics.

Finally, a report from Planned Parenthood of Western Washington shows abortions are on the rise in Washington state even though it participated in Washington state’s Take Charge pilot program.

Take Charge is a Medicaid section 1115 Waiver program initiated in 2001 to provide free contraceptives to low-income women not already covered under Medicaid. It was originally funded for five years in 2001, then extended for three more years, and comes up for renewal in 2009.

Yet the PPWW annual report indicates abortions rose 16 percent from 7,790 in 2006 to 9,059 in 2007.

The failure of birth control, the morning after pill, and contraception to lower the number of abortions is no surprise to Dr. Joseph Stanford, associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

He says studies he and fellow researchers have done show a lower effectiveness rate than the 89 percent that Plan B maker Barr Laboratories claims.

“We did more a precise meta-analysis that shows it’s effective only 72 percent of the time, and even that number is optimistic,” he indicated.

He said studies from Europe, China and the United States show that the morning after pill does not reduce abortions.