President Obama – the Anti-Abortion President?

The National Day of Prayer (May 1st) is supposed to be about unity, about people coming together, a purely non-partisan event. However, leave it to James Dobson, the cranky founder of Focus on the Family, to spoil the mood.

“President Obama, before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion president,” Dobson said at the event on Thursday. “This is something that he really was going to promote and support, and he has done that, and in a sense he is the abortion president.”

Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Calif.), who is co-chair of the weekly congressional prayer breakfast was so outraged she pointed a finger at Dobson and said, “This is inappropriate!” and then walked out.

But, is Obama really the abortion president as conservatives like to claim? Or, do the numbers tell a different story?

Abortion numbers peaked in 1981, under conservative icon Ronald Reagan. Of course, Reagan had only been in office for one year, so even die-hard liberals can’t place the blame on him. The abortion rates have been falling ever since, except for a few years during which it stalled from 2005 to 2008 (under Republican President George Bush).

Image from: ncrtl.org

According to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate fell by 13 percent under Obama. The U.S. abortion rate declined to 16.9 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2011, well below the peak of 29.3 per 1,000 in 1981, and the lowest since 1973 when the rate was 16.3 per 1,000, according to “Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2011,”

Conservatives probably think these numbers suggest that restricting freedom and closing down abortion clinics is working. The authors of the study counter this possible argument by noting that “the study period (2008â€"2011) predates the major surge in state-level abortion restrictions that started during the 2011 legislative session, and that many provisions did not go into effect until late 2011 or even later.”

So, how can Obama claim the title of the abortion president if the numbers are falling under his watch? In reality, he can’t. Yes, he is for freedom of choice.  Yes, he is for abortion rights. Yes, the Affordable Care Act has provisions on providing birth control (something James Dobson is fighting in the courts). Yes, he is for birth control and sex education.

Birth control and sex education â€" two things that help reduce the chance of an unwanted pregnancy, a pregnancy often ending in abortion. So, James Dobson should have called him the anti-abortion president â€" that would have been much closer to the truth.

Featured image from; ncrtl.org