Mission The United States and Canada face a dangerous shortage of trained abortion providers. According to research by the Guttmacher Institute, in 2000, 87% of the counties in the United States had no abortion provider. The “graying” of current providers (57% of whom are over the age of 50), violence that targets physicians, and restrictive legislation threaten to drive these numbers even lower. In addition, medical schools are simply not addressing the topic; most physicians are graduating with little more than circumstantial knowledge of abortion.