According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 1,366,000 abortions performed in the United States in 1996, compared with 3,891,000 live births out of 6,240,000 total pregnancies.  Taken together, this means that 21.89% of all pregnancies in the United States in 1996 were ended by abortion.

(Source: U. S. National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, Trends in Pregnancies and Pregnancy Rates by Outcome: 1976-1996, Series 21 No. 56, in the U. S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2000 [120th edition] Washington, DC, 1999, p. 78.)

"I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.  Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.  In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art. ...If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot."

(Source: Hippocrates of Cos, "The Hippocratic Oath", 4th century, BC, from Ludwig Edelstein, "The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation and Interpretation," in Oswei Temkin and Lillian C. Temkin, eds., Ancient Medicine, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967, p. 3-63.)

Medical researchers in Brazil recently have issued warnings that misoprostol, used to induce chemical abortions in Brazil, the United States, and abroad, may cause severe birth defects in children if used by pregnant women.

In the American Journal of Medical Genetics, four physicians from Sarah Hospital in Brazil, along with another from Nagasaki University School of Medicine in Japan, write that misoprostol, which has a legitimate use in treating gastric-duodenal cancer, is often misused for low-cost abortions, even though abortion is illegal in Brazil.

For those infants who survive misoprostol exposure, and escape abortion, the congenital malformations are grave: "The most striking manifestations common to the patients were growth retardation, underdeveloped bones, short equinovarus feet, rigidity of multiple joints with skin dimples and webs, decreased movement of legs, hypoplasia or atrophy of limb muscles, and absent tendon reflexes."  Other researchers have noted cranial nerve deficiency, delayed motor and mental development, the Möbius anomaly, and hydrocephaly.

It seems that a drug often used for the killing of children may cause them harm, as well.

(Source: Coelho, Katia-Edni F. A., et al, "Misoprostol Embryotoxicity: Clinical Evaluation of Fifteen Patients with Arthogryposis," American Journal of Medical Genetics 95 [2000]: 297-301.)