This just in: More people died in 2019 from abortions than any other cause of death worldwide.
Data compiled by Worldometers — a highly accredited site that collects official data from governments, scientific journals, and other reputable groups like the World Health Organization — revealed that as of December 31, 2019, an estimated 42.4 MILLION abortions had been performed over the course of the year.
Those staggering statistics, when compared to the number of babies born in 2019, would suggest that nearly a quarter of all pregnancies worldwide (23 percent) ended in abortion. For every 33 live births last year, 10 babies were aborted.
In the U.S. alone, where nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion, there are over 3,000 abortions per day.
Abortion and The Global Death Toll
With deaths from abortion exceeding those from cancer, HIV/Aids, suicide, malaria, and car accidents combined, several pro-life activist groups are calling abortion “the social justice cause of our time.”
Of course, the debate around the cause is whether or not to call abortion what it is: death. And whether or not to call unborn babies what they are: humans. Because of this, the more than 42 million lives that were lost last year to abortion are not recorded in the global death toll of 2019, which was 59 million.
When we count each and every one of these babies — the same way God sees and knows and loves every single one of them — as humans who died, the actual number of deaths worldwide in 2019 was approximately 101 million.
Although pro-life advocates are working tirelessly to put an end to abortion, their efforts continue to be met with social and political reform.
2019 saw radical movements toward less-restrictive abortion laws in the U.S.
The state of New York kicked things off in January by signing the Reproductive Health Act, which legalized late-term abortions through the third trimester.
Weeks later, democrats in Virginia proposed a similar bill, which would have allowed abortions up until the moment a baby took their very first breath. That proposal got shut down, but a different bill of its kind found success in the state of Illinois.
But soon came a flood of support on the pro-life side. Heartbeat bills made headlines across the nation, with states like Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, Louisiana, and Missouri all signing bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
And beyond bipartisan debates, 2019 saw a Christian film with hardly any marketing success blow the socks off of box offices around the nation with the anti-abortion film, Unplanned, based on the true story of former Planned Parenthood Director, Abby Johnson.
Although abortion rates in the U.S. are reportedly on the decline, it is still one of the leading causes of death, robbing the lives of an estimated 1 million U.S, babies annually. And a report from the UK Department of Health last week revealed that in 2017 — the most recent year on record for which the Department has revised abortion statistics — the number of abortions in the UK hit a 10-year high.
Later this month, thousands will gather in Washington D.C. for the 47th annual March for Life rally from January 22nd through the 24th. This year’s theme is “Life Empowers: Pro-Life is Pro-Woman,” reminding the nation that “abortion at its core also harms us women.”
The annual march commemorates the January 22, 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, which invalidated 50 state laws and made abortion legal and available on demand throughout the United States.
