Good news for fetuses: the rate of U.S. abortions have hit a new low under President Obama. Not since the legalization of abortion during the Nixon Administration in 1973 has the abortion rate been so low, at just 16.9 abortions per 1,000 pregnancies.

Abortion was made legal in the United States by the Supreme Court in 1973, when the abortion rate was 16.3 per 1,000 pregnancies. The American Dream was dead, young men were forcibly sent to the war against Vietnam, and the decline of the middle class now required all but the wealthiest women to work full time away from home. It is little wonder that abortions nearly doubled.

With Ronald Reagan in the White House and the decline of America accelerating, the abortion rate skyrocketed. The abortion rate was 29.3 per 1,000 viable fetuses when Reagan was elected, and it wasn't until Reagan's successor George H.W. Bush was out of office that the appallingly high abortion rate finally dropped below 25 per 1,000 pregnancies.

But it's not all good news for the children, as continuing economic devastation is also credited with lowering the abortion rate during Obama's family-oriented presidency. Because abortion clinics have been outlawed in the poorest states and because birth control is more widely available and more effective today, women are now more likely to prevent pregnancy rather than risk trying to end it later.

The study of American abortion trends was done by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization based in New York and Washington.

Despite the sky-high abortion rates that began under Richard Nixon and exploded during the Reagan Era, the American population has yet to decline. In fact, the U.S. population has swollen to 317 million today from just 212 million in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided. Nothing less than a powerful plague or massive meteor strike is likely to reduce the nation's population to the sustainable levels of a century ago.

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