(LifeSiteNews) — The biggest abortion promoters, the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher institute, have every reason to exaggerate the number of abortions worldwide each year. 

So when the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute both estimate that 73 million induced abortions occur each year, can they be believed?  Or is the real number likely to be smaller? Perhaps much smaller? 

 To question this widely cited number is not to minimize the tragedy of abortion.  Those of us who value human life mourn the loss of each and every child of God.  Even one death is one too many. 

That said, it would be foolish to naively accept the formulations of those whose commitment to abortion clearly outweighs their commitment to the truth. The WHO, while not openly pro-abortion, nevertheless insists that abortion is a human right and publicly advocates for the easing of abortion laws. The practical effect of both of these positions is to increase the number of abortions. 

The Guttmacher Institute, for its part, claims to be an independent research organization that it is solely focused on gathering empirical abortion data. But this former affiliate of Planned Parenthood—up until 2007—receives all of its funding from pro-abortion sources.  And, like the WHO, Guttmacher works to promote abortion by framing this deadly act as a critical component of healthcare and advocating against any and all restrictions. 

It is reasonable to ask if their abortion estimates may be exaggerated due to their advocacy for reproductive rights. Are they inflating illegal abortion figures to support legalization efforts, perhaps, or to boost fundraising efforts, or both? 

So where does their 73 million figure come from?  It comes from a single study, published by Bearak et al in The Lancet Global Health in 2020, that estimated the number of abortions per year for the period from 2015 to 2019.  The study uses Bayesian modeling—which is to say clever guesswork—to try and estimate current abortion rates by combining earlier data with current birth rates, contraceptive prevalence rates, and other indirect evidence. 

But here’s the catch.  For Bayesian modeling to work at all, the original data—the starting point of assumptions—must be fundamentally sound. And historic estimates of global abortion have been anything but. 

In fact, previous estimates have been all over the map.  A 1995 estimate cited in PubMed claimed that there were 26 million legal and 20 million illegal abortions worldwide, for a total of 46 million abortions. A 2016 Lancet studye stimated 56 million abortions annually over the period from 2010–2014, which is 17 million fewer than estimated by Bearak et al for the years following. Did the number of abortions really increase by 17 million over the course of a couple of years, or were one or both estimates hopelessly flawed?   

Bearak et al’s analysis thus succumbs to the fatal weakness of not just Bayesian modeling, but of all computer modeling: GIGO. Which is to say, Garbage In, Garbage Out. 

The Guttmacher Institute, in a rare moment of candor, virtually admits that it really has no idea what the abortion rates are in most parts of the world: 

Tracking the rate of abortion in various countries around the world is difficult because many nations do not record or report abortion rates. This is especially true in nations where abortion is illegal, and thus no official records are kept. 

Estimating the number of abortions in countries where it is culturally unacceptable is pure guesswork. Abortionists won’t like this analogy, but it is a lot like asking career criminals how many crimes they have committed and expecting to get a truthful answer. 

The limitations of the data that does exist is an open secret. For example, a United Nations report that was published twenty years ago (!) is still often cited as a primary source.  The report, called World Abortion Policies, attempted to estimate the number of abortions in each country, yet it included less than a third of the 193 member nations.   

The Guttmacher Institute admits that the report is “increasingly outdated” but still insists that this 2005 report “remains some of the best data available.” 

That some of the best data available dates from the turn of the century and covers only a fraction of the world’s countries hardly gives credence to the claim that there are 73 million abortions annually in the world.   

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The Guttmacher Institute, again relying on the flawed Bearak et al study, makes the counterintuitive claim that “abortion rates are often higher in nations where abortion is illegal than they are in nations where it is legal.”  

It explains what it calls this “surprising” finding by saying:   

This is because abortion tends to be more readily available in wealthier, more developed nations, where women are less likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy—in large part because birth control and proper sexual education are also widely available and sexual crimes are less common.

Conversely, women in developing and least-developed countries, who tend to have decreased access to birth control and education, but who are more often the victims of sexual crimes, are three times more likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy. Yet, 93 percent of the countries with the most restrictive abortion laws are developing nations.

As a result of these factors, the market for abortions is greater in underdeveloped countries even when abortion is legally prohibited. With no legal recourse, pregnant women in these countries often turn to unlicensed and illegal abortion clinics to obtain an abortion. Illegal abortions are more dangerous than legal abortions, as they tend to be conducted by people with less training, and they come with higher risks and complications, including the risk of death of the mother.”

 How do we know that “pregnant women in developing countries often turn to unlicensed and illegal clinics to obtain an abortion” in such striking numbers?   

 Because the Guttmacher Institute says so.   

Guttmacher itself admits that there is little data on abortion numbers in developing countries, and virtually none from countries where abortion is illegal. So, it fills the gaps by including unreliable data from countries with no reporting and extrapolating from fertility surveys, all the while making assumptions from known fertility rates, inferences from contraception rates, and ungrounded speculations about unplanned pregnancies ending in abortion as it goes. 

Occam’s Razor suggests a simpler principle at work in Guttmacher’s “surprising” finding.   

Namely, that Guttmacher’s researchers are driven by their pro-abortion bias to—consciously or unconsciously—exaggerate the number of illegal abortions—and the number of women who die from “unsafe abortions” —in countries which place strict limits on abortion. 

The profit motive also comes into play, with higher numbers of “unsafe abortions” being used to justify larger grant requests year after year. 

From the very beginning, the international abortion movement has advanced its agenda using fabricated numbers. Those advocating for legalizing abortion in the U.S., including abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, certainly did. They were claiming in the late sixties that 1 million illegal abortions were being performed in the U.S. every year and that 10,000 women were dying from such back-alley abortions.   

Dr. Nathanson, who came to repent the thousands of abortions he himself had performed, later admitted that these figures were “totally false”. The actual number of illegal abortions, he wrote in his 1979 book, Aborting America, was closer to 100,000, while maternal deaths from illegal abortions were, according to federal data from 1967, 160. 

He admitted that they made up the higher numbers to generate sympathy for their cause. 

The global abortion movement is still making up numbers today. 

Whatever the real number of abortions performed annually around the globe, it is surely much lower than 73 million. And that is all to the good. 

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Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of The Devil and Communist China.