Paul Tuns:
According to the Worldometer, a real-time measure of vital international statistics, abortion was the leading cause of death in the world in 2023 with more than 44.6 million abortions committed globally.
The Worldometer does not record abortions as deaths, of which there were 60.6 million in 2023. As the Christian Post reported, “If abortions were counted as deaths in the statistics, the fatalities last year would have exceeded 100 million, and abortions would have accounted for more than 40 per cent of them.”
The total number of human beings killed by abortion is greater than the number of deaths attributed to the next seven most common causes of death combined: communicable disease, cancer, smoking, alcohol use, HIV/AIDS, road accidents, and suicide.
Communicable diseases killed 12.9 million people in 2023, cancer 8.2 million, and “smoking” 4.9 million people.
Other causes of death include water-borne diseases (800,000), flu (500,000), and malaria (300,000).
Put another way, there are approximately three abortions committed every two seconds of the day as there are 31.536 million seconds in a calendar year.
Globally, there are more than 122,000 every day. By comparison, cancer kills 22,465 people every day.
According to official statistics, India is responsible for approximately 16.6 million abortions and China for 9.7 million. There are 2.24 million abortions in Pakistan and 2 million abortions in Nigeria. There are about 900,000 abortions annually in the United States and 90,000 each year in Canada.
The pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights reports that 35 per cent of the world’s women of reproductive age live in the 77 countries with abortion-on-demand, mostly western countries including Canada. Another 25 per cent live in countries where abortion is available to women for a broad variety of reasons. 12 per cent of women of childbearing age live in 47 countries where abortion is permitted only to protect the health of the mother, while just six per cent of women live in the 22 countries which prohibit abortion completely.
Jeff Gunnarson, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, told The Interim, “Without diminishing the fact that so many precious lives at home and round the world are killed by abortion, there is a cold reality that strikes me — some 45 million — can anyone fathom that number? I think it is numbing.” Gunnarson pointed out that the annual abortion toll is greater than the population of Canada (40.5 million).
“In light of the shocking number of innocent lives killed,” Gunnarson said, “it is absurd that abortion proponents are trying to spread abortion even wider than is committed today.”
The UK-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said in a release, “44 million deaths due to abortion is a horrific death toll” which “reveals the staggering contradiction at the heart of the world’s current situation, one claiming to value life while assenting to the killing of millions of innocent lives.” SPUC added that pro-lifers around the globe “must take this number and reality into account, reminding us that we cannot afford to be complacent, though we should not despair.”
The Worldometer data is collected from official sources such as the United Nations, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank, among others, to provide estimates for various topics in real-time. Worldometer is non-partisan.
