Abortion

Maryland has some of the highest abortion rates in the nation. While the abortion rate declined 9 percent nationally between 2000 and 2005, the abortion rate in Maryland rose 8 percent during that same period. Our state’s abortion rate is now 38 percent higher than the national rate, with more than one-in-four Maryland pregnancies ending in abortion. There were 37,590 abortions performed in Maryland in 2005, or nearly 103 per day, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Those numbers, sadly, come as little surprise because our state is home to one of the most permissive abortion laws in the country, having in 1992 approved a state version of the Freedom of Choice Act recently proposed at the federal level. Maryland has no parental consent law, no meaningful parental notification law, no informed consent law, no mandatory waiting period, no regulation of abortion clinics, and no abortion reporting requirement. What’s more, $2.7 million of state taxpayer dollars are used every year to pay for Medicaid-funded abortions and, in many cases, abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy.

Science tells us that human life begins at conception, and the Church teaches that human life must be respected at each moment of its existence. In his1995 encyclical letter, The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote: “It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.”

The Maryland Catholic Conference works to foster a culture of life in Maryland by advocating for laws that uphold the dignity of the human person and that assist pregnant women in need.