There are currently (January 2010) circulating, in the pro-life community, reports on abortions claimed by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) for the year 2008.
The basic reports are that the IPPF stated that it provided over 1 million “abortion services” in 2008. (One pro-life news source reported this as IPPF doing over 1 million abortions.) However, this does NOT mean IPPF did 1 million abortions.
In its service report, IPPF lumped all the following together to get to the 1 million number (actually, 1,134,539):
Pre-abortion counseling
Surgical abortions
Post-abortion counseling
Medical abortions
Post-abortion care
Abortion consultation/diagnostics
Referrals to external abortion services
The actual number of abortions (surgical and medical) reported by IPPF was:
Surgical abortions —- 363,089
Medical abortions —- 90,035
Total abortions: 453,124
While this is absolutely horrible, it is less than half of the 1 million number.
You can see the actual IPPF report at http://www.ippf.org/NR/rdonlyres/0D95CED8-3988-4443-939F-D3E9BBD87B8A/0/apr0809.pdf. The “abortion services” numbers are on page 32.
