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Abortion Rate Decline Halts with Recession

The New York Times reported today that the abortion rate in the U.S., which has been declining over the past 30 years, has hit a plateau. The report from the Guttmacher Institute did not give a reason for it, but study author Rachel Jones suggested that because unplanned pregnancies are “increasingly concentrated among poor and low-income women,” tough economic times may drive these women to consider abortion when they might not under stronger financial conditions. In 2008, there were 1.2 million abortions in the U.S., a number that hasn’t changed in three years. Also, more women are favoring medication abortions (the use of the drug mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486) instead of surgery. Randall K. O’Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee told The New York Times that women are preferring medication-induced abortions as what they see as a tidier solution, “but in truth it’s nothing like that. There’s lots of side effects.”