By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League
October 24, 2013
RALEIGH — Fewer babies are being born in North Carolina, and fewer are being aborted according to data released earlier this month by the State Center for Health Statistics. Even so, 24,439 children were aborted here in 2012.
“It’s a tremendous tragedy to see even one child deprived of life, yet we should celebrate each time the number of abortions drops, as it has for the last six years,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League. “The 2012 report showed a 6.7 percent decrease from 2011.”
According to the data, 20,973 of the abortions were on North Carolina residents, with more than 8,000 of them performed in Mecklenburg County. Wake was second with 6,654, followed by Orange and Cumberland counties, each with more than 2,800. Some 77 abortions were performed on children 21 weeks or older, while most occurred during the first two months of pregnancy.
More than half of the women undergoing abortion in 2012 were between the ages of 20 and 29, with the average age 26.3 years. More than 75 percent of them were unmarried.
Although African Americans make up just 21 percent of the state’s population, more than 45 percent of abortions were performed on African American women. Nearly 38 percent were on white patients and 10 percent on Hispanic. The Hispanic community reported the highest rate of pregnancies at 102.6 per 1,000 women. More than 24.5 percent of the state’s 12,535 teen pregnancies were repeat pregnancies, and some 50,000 babies were born out of wedlock, up a 10th of a percent to 40.9 percent.
The report showed that 98.8 percent of the abortions occurred in 16 non-hospital facilities, primarily free-standing clinics.
“This is one more reason that legislation passed last session to improve health and safety procedures at abortion clinics is so important,” said Dr. Creech. The full provisions of the Health and Safety Law Changes bill have not yet taken effect.
Further noted in the data released by SCHS, live births were down .5 percent from 2011, dropping for the fifth year in a row. The good news is that the percentages of low and very low birth weight babies also decreased.
