Abortion becoming less of an issue for women

WASHINGTON — Abortion may flare up as the most emotional issue for senators and activists when confirmation hearings begin this summer for President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. But, statistically, it is becoming less and less of a factor for American women.

The national abortion rate has been declining for more than two decades. It is now at its lowest since 1974, the year after the court's Roe v. Wade decision overturned states' abortion bans by ruling that a woman's decision to terminate pregnancy through surgery is a matter of privacy protected by the Constitution.

Utah abortion rates have also been going down steadily since abortion's peak in 1980, according to data from the state Department of Health.

Activists on both sides of the fight say pro-choice Americans have been less passionate about their beliefs in recent years than their pro-life counterparts — perhaps partly because women who are now of peak abortion ages were born after Roe. Some may take legal abortion for granted. Others may be influenced by mothers, siblings or friends who had negative experiences with abortion or regrets years later.

"It's a very different way that 20- and 30-year-olds are seeing this (nowadays)," said Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America, an anti-abortion group for which Roberts' wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, serves as legal counsel. "It's not about criminalizing it. They just don't want to see it happen."

To an extent, abortion rights advocates agree.

"The major thing you're seeing is the increased intensity around prevention," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for NARAL Pro-Choice America. "People want to reduce the need for abortions."

But Lake said past court fights have shown that pro-choice women snap to attention when they feel their right to choose is vulnerable. "People worry about things when they need to."

Over the years, religious conservatives who believe life begins at conception have sought justices who would chip away at or throw out the Roe decision. While Roberts has given them nothing concrete to go on, some are hopeful he would tip a divided court in that direction.

Meanwhile, data released last month by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, says that fewer than 21 of every 1,000 women, ages 15-44, had an abortion in 2002, the most recent year for which data was available. That compares with a rate of more than 29 per 1,000 at abortion's peak in the United States, in 1980 and 1981. If the trend continues, abortion could soon recede to its 1974 rate, about 19 per 1,000 per women of childbearing age.