Here's how many abortion clinics closed in 2018: report

Forty abortion clinics nationwide either closed or stopped providing abortions in 2018, according to a report released by a pro-life group.

Operation Rescue, which maintains a thorough record of abortion clinics in the U.S., including documents of state violations and malpractice lawsuits against abortionists and their clinics, released a report on Monday listing the clinics that have closed. This includes both surgical abortion facilities and clinics that only provide abortion inducing drugs in which a miscarriage is induced and the mother is responsible for disposing of the baby at home.

Operation Rescue defines "abortion clinics" as those businesses that conduct abortions outside a hospital setting. There are two categories of abortion clinics:

• Surgical Abortion Clinics: These offices conduct surgical abortions. Almost always, surgical facilities also distribute abortion-inducing drugs.

• Medical Abortion Clinics: These offices supply abortions through the administration of drugs (pills) or other chemical means. They do not conduct surgical abortions.

According to their research, by the end of last year, 32 surgical abortion facilities had either closed or stopped providing abortions. An additional eight medical abortion facilities were closed.

Even factoring the opening of new clinics in the U.S., the total number of abortion facilities in the country —697 — was seven fewer than by the end of 2017.

The 697 clinics (467 of them being facilities that perform surgical abortions) also represented a sharp decrease from 2009, when Operation Rescue reported 844 medical and surgical abortion clinics nationwide.

In 1991, there were 2,176 surgical abortion clinics nationwide. "This represents a massive 79 percent decrease in the number of surgical abortion facilities over the past 27 years," the pro-life group added.

Continue reading about abortion clinics on The Christian Post.