A new study into global abortion rates was released on Tuesday by the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank which studies sexual and reproductive health.

Here are some of the main findings:

* ABORTION TRENDS:

– The rate of safe abortions dropped between 1995 and 2003 to 15 from 20 per 1,000 women aged 15-44, but unsafe abortions declined only slightly — to 14 from 15 per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The overall rate fell to 29 from 35 per 1,000 women.

– Globally around 70,000 women die each year from the effects of unsafe abortions, a figure that has barely changed in the last 10 years. An estimated 8 million women annually experience complications and need medical treatment, but only 5 million actually get that care.

(Photo: Anti-abortion protester in London, 27 Oct 2007/Toby Melville)

– Contraceptive use has increased in many parts of the world, particularly Latin America and Asia, contributing to a decline in the worldwide unintended pregnancy rate to 55 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2008 from 69 per 1,000 in 1995.

– A number of countries in which abortion was highly restricted in the 1990s have now liberalised their laws. Since 1997, 22 countries or administrative areas within countries have changed abortion laws. In 19 of those, restrictions were eased.

* ABORTION NUMBERS: (In millions)

               TOTALS           SAFE           UNSAFE:
            1995    2003    1995    2003    1995    2003
 WORLD      45.5    41.6    25.6    21.9    19.9    19.7
 AFRICA      5.0     5.6    n/a      0.1     5.0     5.5
 ASIA       26.8    25.9    16.9    16.2     9.9     9.8
 LATIN AMERICA &
 CARIBBEAN   4.2     4.1     0.2     0.2     4.0     3.9
 EUROPE      7.7     4.3     6.8     3.9     0.9     0.5
 OCEANIA     0.1     0.1     0.1     0.1     n/a     0.02
 N.AMERICA   1.5     1.5     1.5     1.5     n/a     n/a

Sources: Reuters/Guttmacher Institute

Click here for our news story on this report: Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 a year, harm millions.

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Among the areas covered in the just released Pew survey of American public opinion about abortion, one that grabbed my attention asked about factors that influence people’s opinion about the issue.

For those who support abortion rights, only 11 percent cited religious beliefs as the primary influence on their views on the topic; among those who say abortion should be illegal, 53 percent cited faith as their guiding reason. Overall 32 percent of those surveyed cited religious beliefs as the main factor behind their views on abortion.

None of this, mind you, is surprising. Opposition to abortion rights in the United States has been driven primarily by religious conservatives — evangelical and Catholic mostly — and so the figure fits the usual narrative. Few people cite faith as a reason to support abortion rights and so the 11 percent figure in that regard is also what you would expect.

(PHOTO: People gather for the March for Life anti-abortion rally on the National Mall in Washington, January 22, 2009.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst   (UNITED STATES)

But looking at the numbers — 53 percent to 11 percent — does highlight how stark America’s religious/secular divide has become. That’s what jumped out at me.

Among white evangelical Protestants, 58 percent cited religious beliefs as the main influence on their opinions about abortion, a number that climbed to 68 percent for those who attend church on a weekly basis. The only surprise here perhaps was that those figures were not even higher.

The other factors cited were education, personal experience, the views of others and media. A surprising number of overall respondents — 21 percent — chose “something else” as the main influence on their take on this polarizing issue. This also caught my eye.

What do you think would fall under the “something else” category in this context?

Public support for abortion rights is ebbing in America while the issue’s importance has fallen on the public agenda, especially for liberal Democrats, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

In 2007 and 2008, Pew found that supporters of abortion rights outnumbered those saying it should be illegal in most or all cases by a 54 percent to 40 percent margin.

“By contrast, in two major surveys conducted in 2009 among a total sample of more than 5,500 adults, views of abortion are about evenly divided, with 47 percent expressing support for legal abortion and 44 percent expressing opposition,” Pew said.

You can see our full story here and the Pew report here.

What I want to ask readers in this blog is what they think all of this means, especially in light of President Barack Obama’s agenda and other polls which show similar trends.

(PHOTO: Anti-abortion protestor holds sign in front of US Capitol during March for Life in Washington, January 22, 2009/Jonathan Ernst)

In May, we blogged on a Gallup poll that showed “pro-life” Americans (who oppose abortion rights) outnumbering “pro-choice” Americans (who support them) for the first time since the organization began asking that question in 1995. It found 51 percent of Americans referring to themselves as “pro-life” on the issue of abortion versus 42 percent who described themselves as “pro-choice.”

One of the most striking things about the Pew poll is the sharp drop in the percentage of liberal Democrats who regard abortion as a “critical issue” facing the country — to eight percent in August from 34 percent in March 2006. This could suggest that liberal Democrats, focused on the economy and other issues, are far less concerned about the status of abortion rights than they were when George W. Bush was president and the anti-abortion rights Republican Party controlled Congress.

Overall, the percentage of American adults who see it as a critical issue has declined over the same period to 15 percent from 28 percent — in part, no doubt, because of the sour economy and financial crisis.  Even among conservative Republicans, this number has fallen to 26 percent from 35 percent.

But conservative Republicans are less compromising on the issue – 44 percent now say the country needs to find a middle ground on abortion, compared with 56 percent in 2006.  This may be explained in part by conservative Christian activists and talk radio, who have assailed Obama’s support for abortion rights since his first day in office.

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama address at the commencement ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, May 17, 2009, angered some conservative Catholics opposed to abortion rights/John Gress)

Among other things, they accuse Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress of harboring a secret agenda to expand abortion by concealing provisions that would free federal funds for the procedure in the healthcare bills working their way through congress — an allegation denied by the president and his supporters.

Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants — a key Republican base — remain the staunchest opponents of abortion rights, with 64 percent saying they favor making abortion more difficult. Among U.S. Catholics only 44 percent held this view with 47 percent opposed to it. Many conservative Catholics are staunch — and almost single-minded in some cases — in their opposition to abortion rights but the flock is hardly united on the issue.

Where there does seem to be room for middle ground on this highly-charged issue is on the need to reduce the number of abortions in America, which is a goal Obama has endorsed.   Sixty-five percent of Americans think it would be good to reduce the number of abortions compared to 59 percent in 2005.

It all raises a number of interesting questions. A few months ago I interviewed Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. He said at the time (this was a few weeks after the Gallup poll mentioned above) that the “pro-life movement was winning the hearts and minds of America.”

Do you think this is true? Or is much of the swelling opposition to abortion rights at the moment related to wider conservative views about Obama and so perhaps near its peak? And could it begin to rebound as a priority issue with the wider public if recession ends?

It is also worth asking if liberal Democrats will become more engaged on the issue if, say, they are worried about losing the White House in 2012, and with it a president who would fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court with justices supportive of abortion rights. For many on both sides, the Supreme Court is the big prize that is won through the White House. Would the prospect of “President Sarah Palin” galvanise both party’s bases on the issue?

Former Arkanas Governor and Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee has won the first informal round in what will no doubt be a long race to head the party’s White House ticket in 2012.

The affable Baptist preacher, who won the hearts and minds of conservative evangelicals during his failed 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, topped other possible Republican presidential contenders in a straw poll at a summit of Christian conservative voters in Washington.

Out of a field of nine, Huckabee garnered the most votes or 28.5 percent. Delegates to the convention were asked: “Thinking ahead to the 2012 presidential election and assuming the nomination of Barack Obama as Democtats’ choice for president, who would you vote for as the Republicans nominee for president?”

Surprisingly, former Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who lit up the party’s conservative Christian base last year, came in fourth with 12 percent. Her relatively poor performance could have been linked to her failure to attend the summit — Huckabee delivered a rousing speech on Friday.

Huckabee’s arch rival in the 2008 race, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, was the runner-up with 12.4 percent.  He also gave a well-received speech that stuck mostly to economic and foreign policy themes.

Like any straw poll, this one counts for nothing. But it does give an idea of what this key Republican base is looking for as the party tries to chart a path back to power in Congress and the White House.

The second question on the straw poll asked the almost 2,000 delegates — of whom about 600 responded — to indicate the most important issue in determining their choice of candidate out of a list of 13 choices.

Abortion won by a long shot at almost 41 percent, while “protection of religious liberty” was a distant second at 18 percent.

Some observers have suggested the conservative Christian movement, known as the “Religious Right,” needs to expand its agenda beyond “hot-button social issues” if it wants to grow and have political and electoral success. And much of its leadership has been talking more about issues such as poverty.

The movement has also turned its attention to climate change in response to Obama’s agenda, which includes proposed legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Conservative Christian radio stations have spent the summer assailing the “cap and trade” provisions of this legislation as a massive tax hike and several of the delegates whom I spoke to expressed skepticism if not hostility to the widely accepted scientific idea that humans are causing climate change.

One of the break-out sessions on Saturday was called “Global Warming Hysteria: The New Face of the ‘Pro-Death’ Agenda.” For a synposis of this and other sessions click here.

But it is clear that abortion remains by far the biggest issue to this crowd — and even when they talk about climate change these “pro-lifers” talk about the “culture of death.” Time will tell if this is an electoral winner or loser for the Republican Party.

When Americans go to the polls for the congressional elections in 2010, in some places they may also be asked to vote on state ”personhood” amendments that would effectively define life as starting at fertilization or the “start of biological development.”

A proposal like this was rejected by voters in Colorado in November but anti-abortion rights activists hope to get similar ballot measures together in at least a dozen states for 2010.

This could have broader political implications as initiatives in the past on so-called hot button social issues such as gay marriage have brought conservative Christians — an influential voting block in the out-of-power Republican Party — to the polls.

One of the groups involved is the “American Life League” or ALL, a socially conservative Catholic organization that had a booth on Saturday on the sidelines of a summit of self-styled “values voters” in Washington.

Among other things, ALL would like to see an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which won’t happen any time soon) “to establish that legal personhood is granted to all human beings in the United States from the beginning of their biological development.”

Communications director Katie Walker said,  “It is a very simple concept that is fulfilling the civil rights movement.”

 In Florida, activists have launched a campaign to collect the 676,811 signatures they say are required to bring the proposed “personhood” amendment to a vote. Walker said there were plans to get similar initiatives rolling in several other states such as Montana and Colorado.

This is one to keep an eye on.

The first ever comparative surveys of U.S. conservative and progressive (or liberal) religious activists has just been published by the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and Public Religion Research. Click here for a link to the survey.

Many findings of the study – based on a detailed survey answered by 1,866 progressive religious activists and 1,123 conservative ones — will come as no surprise to followers of the U.S. political scene. But they will no doubt be closely scrutinized by both Republican and Democratic strategists.

Republicans are sure to take note of the fact that religious conservatives are still preoccupied with the issues of abortion rights and gay marriage, which they staunchly oppose. The Democratic Party will note that progressive religious activists care deeply about poverty, health care and the environment.

The report’s findings come as activists from the Religious Right and the Religious Left are ginning up their supporters to oppose or support President Barack Obama’s drive to overhaul America’s healthcare system, which is his top domestic priority.

Among the report’s key findings:

Religious affiliation: conservative activists are almost exclusively Christian, whereas progressive activists are more diverse. Among conservative activists, 54 percent  identify as evangelical Protestant, 35 percent as Roman Catholic, and 9 percent with Mainline Protestantism. Among progressive activists, 44 percent identify as Mainline Protestants; 17 percent as Roman Catholics; 10 percent as evangelical Protestants; 12 percent as interfaith, mixed faith, or Unitarian; 6 percent Jewish; and 8 percent who have no formal religious affiliation or identify as formerly affiliated.

Issue priorities: Conservative and progressive religious activists have strikingly different issue priorities. A majority of conservative religious activists gave priority to abortion and same?sex marriage, while progressive religious activists gave priority to a number if issues, including economic justice, the environment, and peace. Conservative religious activists overwhelmingly identify abortion (83 percent ) and same?sex marriage (65 percent) as most important priorities among a set of eight issue areas. Fewer than 10 percent of progressive religious activists call those “most important” issues. Highest priorities for progressive activists are poverty (74 percent), health care (67 percent), environment (56 percent), jobs/economy (48 percent), and the Iraq war (45 percent).

Politics and the 2008 election. In 2008, Barack Obama was the solid favorite among progressive religious activists. Conservative religious activists initially were divided but eventually rallied to John McCain. Among progressive activists, 58 percent say Obama was their first choice in the Democratic primary, and 93 percent supported him in the general election. Conservative activists were initially more split among GOP contenders, with 28 percent calling Mike Huckabee their top choice, with Mitt Romney getting 22 percent and McCain 17 percent. In the general election, however, 90 percent report voting for McCain.

(PHOTO: Josie Acuesta, a member of the organization “Hispanics For Life”, walks with her sign during a “March For Life/Life Chain” rally to protest against abortion in Los Angeles, California in this January 22, 2006 file photo.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

Our post “Catholic comments on Ted Kennedy, pro and con” showed readers were deeply split on whether the late senator should have a Roman Catholic funeral. The naysayers argued that his support for choice on abortion and other disagreements with Church doctrine disqualify him from a religious ceremony. Those for a church funeral argued that he helped advance many causes championed by Catholic social teaching.

Those opposing a Mass of Christian Burial for Kennedy predominated, but not all readers take the time to write a comment. One-click poll questions sometimes give a different picture from comment pages. So here’s a simple question:

Much of the Roman Catholic commentary on the passing this week of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy — who was a practicing Catholic — has applauded his record on civil rights, immigration reform and economic justice but deplored his support for abortion rights. Kennedy died on Tuesday at the age of 77.

(PHOTO: A photo of Senator Edward M. Kennedy sits at the entrance to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. REUTERS/Adam Hunger)

The Catholic News Agency for example ran a report saying “Ted Kennedy leaves mixed Catholic legacy,” noting clerical discomfort with his support for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that granted U.S. women a constitutional right to an abortion and related issues.

“As a Catholic, though he worked hard for the poor, he was criticized by bishops and pro-life leaders for supporting Roe v. Wade, the use of fetal tissue in experiments and for voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion,” the report said.

The line from the Vatican was very much in this vein. In its article about Kennedy’s death, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano praised him for his battles in favor of immigrant rights, gun control and higher minimum wages, but regretted his “unfortunate” support of abortion.

Catholics United, a progressive Catholic organization that supports liberal economic causes and is mobilizing support for President Barack Obama’s healthcare drive, praised Kennedy’s battles on the healthcare and poverty fronts, saying: “Senator Kennedy’s legendary advocacy for justice and the common good – on issues such as health care, immigration, community service, and poverty – spanned more than four decades and touched millions.”

The American Catholic has put together a compilation of reaction from around the Catholic world that you can see here. 

Trolling through there you can find one blogger who said: “Senator Kennedy made the protection of abortion his business. So, will the Catholic Church scandalize its faithful by the pretense that Kennedy was a “Catholic in good standing” and honor him with a funeral Mass?” That blog named several mobsters who had been denied Catholic funeral masses because of their unsavory lives.

U.S. Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden, often face scrutiny and criticism from some of their fellow Catholics. But their commitment to liberal economic and related causes often gels with Catholic social thinking — a point underscored by much of the praise that has come Kennedy’s way this week, even from those within the faith’s fold who took strong exception to his support for abortion rights.

Opposition to abortion rights has brought conservative Catholics and evangelicals together in recent decades, often under the roof of the Republican Party. But the reaction to Kennedy’s death suggests that there may be some limits in the long run to this political alliance.

The Family Research Council, a leading activist group among America’s “Religious Right,” has launched a new TV ad in five key states that claims President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan will lead to publicly funded abortions — a charge disputed by the president’s allies and abortion rights groups.

You can see the new video, Life and Death, below.

FRC President Tony Perkins told reporters in a telephone conference that the ads will run on cable news programs in Arkansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Alaska and Pennsylvania — five states that have significant numbers of social conservatives but are represented by more moderate lawmakers who can be swayed.

The announcement came just ahead of a “phone in” featuring liberal and left-leaning faith leaders — or the Religious Left – and Obama seeking to galvanize support for the president’s bid to overhaul the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system.

Abortion, which is a hugely polarizing issue in America, has become another flashpoint in the escalating battle over healthcare reform, risking public support for an initiative already under attack on several fronts.

Liberal Democrats are threatening to withhold their support after the White House seemed to waffle on its commitment to a public insurance option that would compete with private insurers and offer more choices for consumers.

The liberal rebellion came three weeks after a group of conservative Democrats blocked consideration of healthcare legislation by a House panel until they won concessions from the administration.

PHOTO: Anti-abortion demonstrators unfurl a giant sign on the side of North Table Mountain in Colorado, August 26, 2008, referring to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.  REUTERS/Rick Wilking

In a country like Spain, where a large majority still identify themselves as at least more-or-less Catholic, you’d think the government would shy away from taking on the Roman Catholic Church.  In fact, there are probably few things Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero likes better than a brawl with the bishops.

Lingering anti-clerical sentiment in sectors of Zapatero’s Socialist Party, particularly on its left-most fringes, means the PM has few more effective tools for rallying his voters than the sight of a protest march led by priests and nuns.

(Photo: Prime Minister Zapatero, 5 June 2009/Juan Medina)

At a time when unemployment is closing in on 20 percent, Zapatero knows matters economic are not going to provide anything to cheer his supporters. So there was little surprise when the government rolled out a bill to liberalise abortion laws, including a provision to allow 16 year olds to abort without parental consent, in time for the European elections. At present, Spanish law allows abortion only in certain circumstances, such as if the birth poses a psychogical risk to the mother, although in practice it is easily available.

Just in case the bill didn’t drive the Church into a sufficient paroxysm of rage, the government’s Equality Minister Bibiana Aido, defended the proposal to allow legal minors to seek terminations without their parents’ knowledge by comparing the procedure to breast-enlargement surgery. So, last Friday it must have seemed like mission accomplished to the Socialists when Spain’s bishops duly rebuked them for undermining the country’s moral fabric (see Spanish text of their statement here).

Only one thing is now missing for the manoeuvre to attain political perfection, i.e. to lure the main opposition Popular Party, traditionally allied to the Church, into aligning itself with the religious authorities.  From there, thanks to the historical closeness of the Church to the former dictator Francisco Franco, it is but a short rhetorical jump for the Socialists to accuse the PP of being on the extreme right and out of touch.

From a political point of view, it looks like a neat way of keeping your voters amused while you wait for 150 billion euros in extraordinary public spending to revive the economy. And using the strategy of exploiting Spain’s deep divides on social issues has already been very profitable to Zapatero over the past few years, becoming still more important as it has allowed him to steal voters from the fading force of Izquierda Unida, the United Left coalition located to the left of the Socialists.

But this time, the abortion battle looks like it is in danger of proving a miscalculation.  The Popular Party is doing its best not to fall into the prime minister’s trap, claiming that its opposition to the law has nothing to do with the position of the Church. Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy now bases his strategy on targetting moderate centrist voters and would sprint across across a busy motorway to avoid getting drawn into any heated debate on social issues.

(Photo: Spanish nun at Madrid anti-abortion rally, 29 March 2009/Sergio Perez)

Even more damagingly, Socialists don’t seem to like the law either, with one poll showing 56 percent of Socialist voters against allowing 16 year old girls to abort without parental consent.

Spain’s main left-wing daily El Pais, which has little love for the Popular Party, recently had an interesting take on how Zapatero’s apparent dependence on pleasing his most socially liberal voters might backfire on him. El Pais quoted a senior member of the PP, who gave thanks for Zapatero: “If he turned towards the centre, the PP wouldn’t know how to respond. But he won’t …. He’s making it easy for us, because he’s always doing things that the middle classes, the moderate people, don’t like.”