The pro-life movement, whether it deserves a lot or a little of the credit, has been doing something right about abortion.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released in December showed the number of induced abortions in the United States had declined from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
That's still a million too many, but it speaks to the campaign to change minds and hearts that the pro-life movement has been about for the better part of two decades.
The largest drop came among black women, who still have the highest rate of abortions but who fell from 67 abortions per 1,000 women in 1990 to 47.7 abortions per 1,000 women in 2010.
Into the abortion argument last week lumbered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who told a badgering Chris Matthews of CNBC that "there has to be some sort of punishment" for women who have abortions once he signed new restrictions into law if he became chief executive.
First, a sidebar: Why would a policy-lite candidate appear on a far-left cable network whose host only has in mind to trap him into saying something he doesn't believe, something outlandish, or both? And why would the front-running candidate for a major political party seeking the highest office of the land not have a prepared answer for the likes of the show host, who wants to make him look bad? So that's on the candidate.
But Trump, who co-sponsored a dinner honoring the former president of the National Abortion Rights Action League in 1989 and maintained in 1999 he was pro-choice and wouldn't ban partial-birth abortion, began to adjust his answer before the MSNBC show was even aired.
The first parry was a statement saying he would leave the punishment to the states and that he, like former President Ronald Reagan, was pro-life with exceptions. Later that day, he said should new restrictions be passed that "the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act" would be held responsible, not the woman.
On a show set to air on CBS last Sunday, Trump said "the laws are set now on abortion," he "would've preferred states' rights" but "I think we have to leave it that way." To that, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony list said if that was his answer, he had "disqualified himself as the GOP nominee."
And before that show aired, he qualified his remarks further to say the law would stay as it was "until he is president. Then he will change the law through his judicial appointments and allow the states to protect the unborn."
Whew!
In making his first remark last week, Trump was evidently unaware that, before Roe v. Wade in 1973, prosecution of women was thought impractical, women long have been thought the second victim of abortion, and a large majority of states have repealed abortion prohibitions.
Perhaps since his rapidly altering stances, someone has enlightened the candidate on the progress that has been made since 1990. Changing minds and hearts has worked. Let's keep at it.