Yesterday the Strib had an editorial entitled A troubling increase in teen abortions.

I’ve said it before, for the life of me I can’t figure out what the pro-abortion side finds “troubling” about abortions.

If there’s nothing wrong with it, (and never underestimate the human ability to rationalize and deny), if it’s no different than removing an appendix or a bone spur, then why not have an abortion mill on every street corner. Heck, let’s put ‘em in the schools. If we’re going to douse the little dears in sex ed and nail condoms to their foreheads, might as well cover the whole spectrum.

(Though, if there is something wrong with abortion, then dot dot dot.) The Stribitorial says:

According to state Health Department figures, just over 14,000 pregnancies were terminated in 2006, about 5 percent more than the previous year. Among girls 17 and younger the increase was more dramatic, about 17 percent higher than in 2005.

You can read the MN Department of Health report here (PDF). Andy had some good thoughts here as well.

Something I especially disagree with is this:

Abstaining from sex is what many parents want for teens, and it definitively translates into no pregnancy. But a recent report showed that abstinence-only curriculums don’t work.

I dealt with that “recent report” in this post. Read it and judge for yourself if that one report really is the final word on the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

Here are some gleanings from the report.

* Four doctors accounted for 47% of the total of 14,065 abortions. (The four performed a total of, yes, 6,666 abortions.)

* The number of girls age 15-17 having abortions jumped from 633 in 2005 to 730 in 2006.

* As county of residence for women having an abortion, Hennepin led the way with 4,801. The next closest was Ramsey with 2,228.

* By far, the most common procedure (11,433) was suction currettage. You can read about what that is here. Perhaps even the Strib does find that troubling. Just not enough to want to do anything about ending it.

* The most common reason given for having an abortion (9,598) was “Does not want children at this time.” Abortion is simply a form of birth control.

The Strib’s answer is more education. Perhaps. If education was a panacea though, maybe we could just load up some C-130s with crates of condoms and copies of Our Bodies Ourselves, fly over Iraq and shove ‘em out the back and presto, Iraq would turn into a hot, dry Norway overnight.

The pro-abortion lobby maintains this schizophrenic tension of saying on the one hand abortions are “troubling” and should be “rare”, and on the other saying abortion is a perfectly legitimate choice that should be there if you want it. That tension cannot hold, and when it breaks, it’s the women who want to believe what they are told by the Planned Parenthoods of the world who are whipsawed and left to deal with the consequences.