CDC data reveals New York City is the ‘late-term abortion capital’

After the final presidential debate in October, pro-abortion groups and media outlets tried to mislead on the truth regarding late-term abortions, going so far as to claim that extremely late-term abortions don’t happen. But data recently released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2013 shows that late-term abortions do occur. For that year in New York City alone, out of 69,804 abortions, 2.5 percent — 1,752 — were late-term (post 21 weeks).

At CNSNews.com, Terence P. Jeffrey notes that based on the data, that’s one every five hours, making NYC “the nation’s late-term abortion capital.” The data is not broken down beyond 21 weeks, which means we don’t know just how late in term these children were aborted. Were they seven, eight, even nine months? We just don’t know. But the numbers are staggering.

The CDC data is from 2013, voluntarily reported, and comes from states who choose to report their abortion data, as well as the District of Columbia and New York City. But NYC beat all other reporting states in terms of number of abortions performed after 21 weeks.

Jeffrey points out that the “entire states of New Jersey and Georgia each reported that 705 unborn children at least 21 weeks of age were aborted within their borders in 2013. They led all 39 states that reported their abortions by gestational age.” And yet, “their combined 21-weeks-and-later abortions (1,410) did not equal the 1,752 done in New York City alone.”

New York City has a high population (over 8.4 million in 2013). New Jersey’s population (which was 8.9 million in 2013) is close, so one would expect that the abortion numbers would be similar. And yet, New Jersey’s late-term abortions were about 40 percent of NYC’s.

Three other states’ late-term (post 21 weeks) abortion numbers surpassed 2.5 percent of their total abortions: New Mexico, a late-term abortion capital in its own right, had 259 (6.3 percent); New Jersey had 705 (3.3 percent), and Colorado had 256 (2.6 percent). Yet the raw numbers pale in comparison to NYC’s.

As a state, New York has some of the most relaxed abortion laws in the country. While many states are moving in the direction of strengthening their protection for the preborn, New York is trying to make abortion even more available. In April 2015, Live Action News reported that the State Assembly had passed a law expanding third-trimester abortions for the reason of “well-being.” The sponsor, Deborah Glick, even said that “there are many, many women who are totally and completely thrilled that they had the opportunity to control their lives and what their future would be.”

The Senate bill ultimately failed, while the Assembly bill was referred to committee in June 2016. Should the bill eventually pass, however, New York’s numbers for late-term abortion may be higher in the coming years and with subsequent reports.

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute notes that “New York does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions—such as waiting periods, mandated parental involvement or limitations on publicly funded abortions—often found in other states.”

The total number for New York as a whole was 98,046 abortions — meaning 71 percent of New York’s abortions happen in New York City.

Along with being known as the late-term abortion capital of the country, New York City is a place where more black babies are aborted than born. As TooManyAborted.com has highlighted, according to 2013 data from the New York State Department of Health, more black babies are born aborted than born alive in NYC, with 1,180.3 abortions for 1,000 births.