Although heralded by the abortion lobby as both “safe and legal,” it is now apparent that abortion is merely “legal.” The complications of this, the most commonly performed medical procedure in America today, are legion. They include sterility—occurring in as many as 25 percent of all women receiving mid-trimester abortions; hemorrhaging—nearly 10 percent of all cases require transfusions; viral hepatitis—occurring in 10 percent of all those transfused; embolism—occurring in as many as 4 percent of all cases; cervical laceration; pelvic inflammatory disease; genital tract infection; cardiorespiratory arrest; acute kidney failure; and amniotic fluid embolus.

Why does it seem that the abortion industry’s grassroots support is slipping at the very moment when its power and resources have reached their zenith? At least part of the reason may be the very nature of the abortion business itself—along with the inevitable fallout that accompanies it. Consider:

• During the summer and fall of 2015, a series of undercover videos revealed the true nature of the grisly abortion trade. Planned Parenthood, the oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of abortion services and the world’s most profitable non-profit organization scandalized the nation as its brutal, callous, and brazen practices were graphically exposed. Even many supporters of a woman’s “right to choose” were shaken by the spectral horror of baby-parts for sale juxtaposed in the videos with a flippant commercial disregard for the health and safety of women.
• As a result, though the politically protected international abortion business has grown into a massive multi-billion dollar industrial complex, its business is more divisive and polarizing than ever. A great divide persists. Despite its obvious political clout, its cavernously deep corporate pockets, and its carefully crafted public relations efforts the abortion industry has yet to prevail in the battle for the hearts and minds of most Americans. Public opinion polls conducted in the aftermath of the Planned Parenthood scandal found that 55 percent of Americans now call themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion while only 38 percent are willing to call themselves “pro-choice.” And just over 60 percent of those polled favored congressional and state efforts to de-fund Planned Parenthood—stripping the organization of its massive tax-payer largess.
• But, the PR disaster prompted by the videos only accelerated a trend that was already gaining momentum. In 2005, 59 percent of respondents agreed it would be good to reduce abortions. Five years later more than 65 percent took this view, an increase of 6 points. Another poll taken before the Planned Parenthood scandal found fewer Americans, and fewer pro-life advocates were willing to compromise on abortion by finding some “middle ground.” Indeed, support for finding a middle ground on the abortion issue was already down 12 points among conservatives and 6 percent among all Americans.
• Although heralded by the abortion lobby as both “safe and legal,” it is now apparent that abortion is merely “legal.” The complications of this, the most commonly performed medical procedure in America today, are legion. They include sterility—occurring in as many as 25 percent of all women receiving mid-trimester abortions; hemorrhaging—nearly 10 percent of all cases require transfusions; viral hepatitis—occurring in 10 percent of all those transfused; embolism—occurring in as many as 4 percent of all cases; cervical laceration; pelvic inflammatory disease; genital tract infection; cardiorespiratory arrest; acute kidney failure; and amniotic fluid embolus.
• As a result of these sundry complications, women in America have seen a massive increase in the cost of medical care. While the average cost of normal health maintenance for men has increased nearly 12 percent over the past fifteen years due to inflation, the average cost for women has skyrocketed a full 27 percent.
• A spate of medical malpractice lawsuits from botched abortions has intensified the industry”s already looming insurability crisis.
• At the same time, the cultural and political stigmatization of abortion providers has dramatically reduced the number of qualified physicians willing to serve them. As a result, many clinics have been forced to rely on less adequately trained personnel—nurse practitioners and doctors who more often than not have failed in private or institutional practices.
• Revelations about deliberately suppressed research data on various procedural risks—particularly concerning the established links between abortion and breast cancer—have raised new questions about the industry”s medical objectivity and professional integrity.
• New clinical evidence exposing the grave hazards of several of the other forms of treatment championed by the industry—from the deleterious effects of the RU-486 abortion drug and the Norplant contraceptive surgery to the inherent risks and complications in the use of intrauterine devices—have raised the specter of “wholesale institutional quackery.”
• The shadow over the industry’s iatrogenic carelessness has been further darkened by its enthusiastic defense of the horrifying second-trimester “dilation and extraction” surgical procedure—commonly known as D&X or “partial-birth’ abortion.
• In addition, the industry has staked its tenuous reputation on the therapeutic usefulness of two very dangerous new chemical treatments—the Depo-Provera long-term contraceptive injection and the Methotrexate-Misoprostol abortifacient. Both drugs present grave hazards to women’s health, according to a battery of recent clinical tests.
• Horrifying new evidence of barbaric human-rights violations—including forced abortions, coercive sterilizations, and torturous disfigurement—associated with the Planned Parenthood-designed population program in Communist China has cast an ominous shadow over the industry’s innumerable other tax-funded international activities.
• Not surprisingly, the bridling of information about viable alternatives to the abortion industry’s clinical, educational, and surgical services has provoked the wrath of a variety of health-care consumer advocates.
• Parents, outraged at the promiscuity-promoting content of the abortion industry’s affiliated sex-education materials, AIDS-awareness programs, and community-advocacy projects, have begun to organize grassroots efforts to bar organizations such as Planned Parenthood from schools, charitable networks, and civic coalitions in communities all across the United States.
• Several punitive lawsuits initiated by the abortion industry—filed in an effort to close down pro-life adoption agencies and abortion-alternative crisis pregnancy centers—have begun to reinforce a perception that the organization is more concerned with the ideological enforcement of its agenda than with the health and welfare of its clients.
• A series of negative public-relations campaigns launched by the well-heeled abortion lobby—against cultural conservatives in general and Christian conservatives in particular—has highlighted the industry’s immoderate aims and set the standard for the increasingly shrill rhetoric and hysterical extremism of the pro-abortion movement.
• Conflict-of-interest accusations have begun to circulate in Washington concerning the cozy relationships between certain past and present federal officials and the industry’s voluble lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
• A backlash against the massively unpopular “health-care-reform” legislation passed in early 2010 not only has brought renewed support for pro-life organizations, crisis pregnancy centers, and principled politicians, it has brought renewed scrutiny to the grisly abortion trade. New calls to enforce existing laws and enact stricter new ones bode ill for the industry”s plans for growth and expansion.

In short, one scandal after another has hit the abortion industry, its medical personnel, its educators, its researchers, its lobbyists, and its administrators. As a result, its “Teflon” reputation is starting to wear a little thin and its “grand illusion” has begun to lose its luster.

This expanded excerpt is adapted from George Grant’s forward to Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue by R.C.Sproul. Download the ebook for free until January 31, 2016. Used with permission.