Medical News Today: Abortion Provider Said To Have Understated Abortion Numbers By Thousands

Planned Parenthood's Guttmacher Institute has disclosed that a Delaware abortion provider has admitted to greatly underreporting the number of abortions it performs each year-including in statistics that it provided to Delaware's Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS). 

"For too long abortion providers have been allowed to practice without regulation or safeguards, and it now appears that the scope of their operations has been hidden by false reports to government authorities, as well. Delawareans need to know the whole truth behind our state's abortion industry." 

Surrounding evidence points at the scandal-plagued Atlantic Women's Medical Services, which has recently been linked to indicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell and only this week was suspended from the national abortion provider network. 

The Guttmacher Institute's 2008 statistics also reveal that Delaware now has the highest abortion rate in the nation, at 40 abortions annually per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. The state's abortion rate is higher than those of New York, New Jersey, and California, long the leaders in abortion. 

Guttmacher further states that 7,070 abortions were performed in Delaware in 2008 (the last year for which figures are available)1. 

In its "Delaware Vital Statistics Annual Report 2008," DHSS lists Delaware's total number of abortions at 4,603, only 65% of Guttmacher's total2. 

In an attempt to discover the reason for the enormous discrepancy, Ellen Barrosse, President of A Rose and a Prayer (ARAAP), spoke yesterday to Dr. Rachel Jones, Senior Research Associate for the Guttmacher Institute. Dr. Jones confirmed that her researchers received data from every abortion provider in Delaware. 

Dr. Jones revealed that for 2007 and 2008, one provider supplied numbers that were substantially higher than the number it had given in previous years. When asked to explain the sudden and dramatic increase, the provider indicated that it had not been reporting all the abortions done at the facility, and that the actual number of abortions had not increased at all. 

That's an additional 2,467 abortions per year, or over 200 additional abortions per month. 

Dr. Jones declined to identify the provider. The fact that abortions procured by Delaware residents increased by only 530, while abortions procured by out-of-state residents increased by almost 2,000, suggests that the provider that falsified its records is in New Castle County, which is nearer to large population centers in other states. 

There are only two providers in New Castle County-Planned Parenthood of Delaware and Atlantic Women's Medical Services. 

Just across the state line from Pennsylvania, which requires that minors receive parental consent for abortions, Delaware has long officially reported out-of-state abortions at approximately 25% of the total for the state. The new numbers provided by Guttmacher indicate that 46%-almost half-of all abortions done in Delaware are performed on out-of-state women-many of whom may be minors evading parental consent laws in their home states.