If you're smart, you find out why your customers are leaving, and try to figure out some way to bring them back. That's what you do if you sell cereal, CDs or Caribbean cruises.

And it's what you do if you sell abortions.

To an abortionist, the statistics are alarming. A recent study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute reveals that women are having far fewer abortions than they used to. Between 1990 and 1997, America witnessed a 17 percent drop in abortions. Factor in the rise in population, and the drop is even more startling.

Which is bad news if you make a living performing abortions. To put it bluntly, there simply are not enough unwanted babies to go around.

The shortage has exposed the utter hypocrisy of the "safe, legal and rare" crowd, not to mention the chilling biases of their Fourth Estate cheerleaders.

To combat the baby shortage, abortion providers are vigorously engaging in price wars, clinic mergers and ingenious schemes for attracting new patients. For instance, Renee Chelien, who runs a chain of clinics in Detroit, told the New York Times that she provides "a spa-like atmosphere at her offices, with low light in her rooms, aromatherapy, candles and relaxing music."

Even doctors who specialize in partial birth abortions are feeling the pinch. Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo. bemoans the fact that he's no longer one of a small handful of abortionists who perform second and third trimester abortions; today, dozens of doctors do. "The competition for patients is absolutely ruthless," Hern complains.

Business is only going to get worse. Women in their early 20s are more likely than any other group to seek abortions, yet, surveys show that a majority of college-age women are, for the first time since 1973, more likely to identify themselves as pro-life then pro-choice.

While abortion supporters claim they want only to provide women with a choice, the reality is that abortion is a multi-million dollar industry. Planned Parenthood, the nation's biggest abortion provider, grossed $59 million in abortion fees in 1999. In order for a clinic to break even, it must perform a minimum of nine abortions each month.

For all its pro choice rhetoric, how happy will Planned Parenthood really be if abortion rates continue to drop — and its clinics are forced to shut down? But "if you can convince the public that the killing of a human person is a service provided for your health and welfare, then what you've done is create your own client base," points out Judie Brown, president of American Life League.

Those who have left the abortion industry would agree. Some of these former employees say that when frightened teenagers call the clinic, employees are trained to ask them for the date of their last period. Instead of telling these girls they might be pregnant, clinic employees tell them, "You're pregnant." When clients express concerns about the cost of an abortion, clinic "counselors" tell them that diapers and daycare cost a lot more.

Eventually, even these unethical tactics will no longer work, because medical technology may one day lead to the demise of the entire abortion industry.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the abortionist-turned pro-life activist, says that, thanks to the mapping of the human genome, preventing pregnancy will become as easy as switching off a light. It will be possible, Nathanson says, to identify the genes that regulate ovulation and genetically engineer them to be "switched off" if a woman does not wish to become pregnant. The gene can be switched back on again when a woman decides she's ready to start a family.

As Nathanson told George magazine, "Procreation will become separate from pleasure. When all is said and done, the apparatus for becoming pregnant will be genetically obsolete by the time a girl reaches puberty." "When [the technology] is developed, it won't matter what happens to Roe v. Wade. Nobody will care." (While the thought of an abortion-free America is a cheering one to those who recognize the value of all human life, such genetic manipulation is likely to cause more problems than it solves.)

Nathanson predicts that such technology is some 50 years in the future — which means women will continue, for the time being, to seek out the services of abortionists. That's bad news, not only for the babies who are destroyed, but for their mothers, as well. There's the very real possibility that their bodies will be damaged. And two thirds of all women who abort say they eventually regret the procedure; it often leads to long-lasting emotional pain and self-destructive behavior.

The grim truth is that nothing in the way of spas and candles and aromatherapy will make abortion anything less than the horror it is: the deliberate and violent destruction of one's own child.

If this fact gets lost in the decision-making process, the news media is partly to blame. Exhibit "A" is the New York Times, which published the well documented, well written, "too many doctors, too few babies" story. You have to wonder: What strange moral zip code are Times editors wandering in that they could write about the abortion industry with such scrupulous matter-of-factness, as though abortionists were selling detergent instead of death? Don't they realize the Orwellian irony of offering sympathy to abortionists "struggling to survive" and to third-trimester abortionists complaining of "ruthless" competition? Are they exhibiting a bizarre sense of humor by quoting an abortionist who moans "We were just getting killed" because she was down to aborting just eight babies a week?

Today, even "pro-choicers" acknowledge that virtually every abortion involves killing a healthy developing child; they're simply indifferent to this fact. But tens of millions of pro-life Americans are not indifferent, and they are appalled when newspapers blandly write of doctors who complain of having too few babies to abort. To those who recognize the God-given value of ALL human life, it's comparable to sympathizing with Nazi doctors who complain of having too few Jews to experiment on.

Abortionists, of course, dislike being compared to Nazi butchers; they prefer to cloak their deadly trade in the mantle of compassion. If we compassionate doctors weren't there to help these desperate women," they explain with wide-eyed sincerity, women would use a coat hanger, or go to a quack.

Today we see just how altruistic these abortionists really are. The minute abortion doesn't pay them handsomely enough, they slam their doors in women's faces, compassion be damned. Just ask women who live in rural areas, who must travel hundreds of miles to the nearest abortion clinic. Abortionists can't make nearly the kind of money in rural communities that they make in cities, which is one reason 86 percent of all U.S. counties have no abortion clinics.

Instead of worrying about the fate of out-of-work abortionists, Americans ought to be celebrating the fact that the abortion rate IS dropping so dramatically. This may be happening because — as Planned Parenthood claims — clinics are doing such a great job getting women to use birth control.

Maybe. Or maybe the reason is that women are listening less to the abortion industry and more to friends who have undergone abortions, and found them anything but easy. And much credit goes to the folks who really do care about women and their babies: The thousands of volunteers who staff crisis pregnancy centers. Women can go to these centers with the knowledge that they will be told the truth about fetal development. Clients are put in touch with obstetricians who will reduce or even waive their fees for low-income women.

More and more clinics are investing in equipment that is making a tremendous difference in whether mothers choose life or death for their babies: Sonogram machines. Women can see for themselves that their fetuses are no mere blobs of tissue, but active, thumb-sucking, hiccuping, cart-wheeling babies.

While the secular press has long trashed these clinics, the women who actually use them give them high marks. A Family Research Council survey found that 98 percent of crisis pregnancy center clients carry away a positive opinion of them. Maybe it's the kind-hearted staff, or maybe it's because most CPCs go out of their way to provide pleasant, soothing surroundings.

How ironic that, in order to stay solvent, the men and women who traffic in death are being forced to mimic the tactics of the very people who are slowly putting them out of business: Those who save lives by furnishing, not only loving assistance to women in crisis, but also medical evidence in support of the psalmist:

"For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb ..."