South Carolina Abortion Numbers Decline Again
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 28, 2003
Columbia, SC (LifeNews.com) — The number of abortions continued their 15-year decline in South Carolina as new figures from the state show abortions going down during 2002. Since 1988, abortions have dropped a whopping 53 percent.
Mary Glover, statistician for the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control, said the number of reported abortions in 2002 was 6,574. That is 440 fewer abortions than occurred in 2001 — a 6 percent decrease.
Pro-life groups were elated by the news.
"We attribute this success to the faithful work of the pro-life grassroots network, to pro-life legislators, to the wonderful crisis pregnancy centers, and to the untiring message of our state’s moral educators," said Holly Gatling, Executive Director of South Carolina Citizens for Life.
The abortion number peaked at 14,333 in South Carolina in 1988.
Since then, the state legislature has passed a number of pro-life laws that, combined with the educational efforts that took place to pass them, are credited with cutting the number in half.
The legislation includes: a law requiring abortion facilities to obtain parental consent for teens’ abortions, a Right to Know law mandating that abortion businesses provide women considering abortions with information about its risks and alternatives, a partial-birth abortion ban, a law protecting newborns who are born alive following a botched abortion, and a law allowing the sale of Choose Life license plates benefiting the work of abortion alternatives.
This year, the South Carolina state House passed a law banning all forms of human cloning and a bill punishing criminals who attack pregnant women and kill or injure their unborn children.
Gatling says her group hopes the state Senate will pass those laws next year.
Related web sites:
South Carolina Citizens for Life – https://sclife.org
