Tony Leys

tleys@dmreg.com

Iowa's abortion rate continued a dramatic slide last year, new state figures show.

Women had 4,397 abortions in Iowa in 2013, down more than 5 percent from the 4,648 recorded in 2012, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. The annual number has declined 34 percent since hitting 6,649 in 2007.

The steady drop is apparently not due to a decrease in access to abortion services. In fact, Iowa women have more choices of where to obtain those services than they once did.

In 2008, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland started using a telemedicine system to dispense abortion-inducing pills in outlying clinics. Since then, Iowa women have used the system to obtain more than 6,400 abortions.

At one point, Planned Parenthood doctors in Des Moines and Iowa City were using the system to provide abortion pills to patients in 12 other clinics. That number has since been trimmed to seven, as the agency has closed several small-town clinics.

Abortion numbers have been dropping nationally as well, though not as steeply as they've declined in Iowa. In general, Iowa women are less likely than average to have abortions. In 2011, the latest year for which comparable figures are available, there were 9.7 abortions in Iowa for every 1,000 women of child-bearing age. The national rate was 16.9.

Clinics are required to report every abortion provided.

Abortion opponents have expressed doubts that the law is being strictly followed. But they say the declining numbers could reflect more women deciding that abortion is wrong.

However, the steady decline in abortions has not led to more babies being born. Iowa recorded 39,013 births last year. That was 4 percent fewer than the 40,835 recorded in 2007.

Family-planning advocates believe the declining abortion numbers are mainly due to improved sex education and more use of long-acting birth-control methods, such as intrauterine devices or hormone implants.

Suzanna de Baca, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland's new president, chose her words carefully when asked her thoughts about the decline in abortion numbers.

"Our goal is to help people have the education and the contraception they need to plan the pregnancies when it's positive for them," she said. "But we never want to in any way suggest that having an abortion is a negative thing. That's a choice that every woman needs to make herself, along with her family and her doctor."