The Shocking Commonness of Abortion: 33% of Women Get an Abortion
I had always assumed abortions were relatively rare. I had imagined that people who wanted babies had them, people who didn't want babies used birth control. And where birth control failed the natural statistical reluctance of the body to get pregnant would keep the numbers of unintended pregnancies low. Those who didn't use birth control, or didn't use it properly, would surely be a small minority. I don't mean to sound overly naive here, I am exaggerating my surprise slightly, but I was genuinely stunned to see the statistics and learn that 1 out of every 3 women will get an abortion in their lifetime, creating 1.2 million abortions every year in America. Regardless of where you see abortion on the morality spectrum, that's pretty messed up. Many worthy debates have been had on the morality of abortion with neither side budging, but surely both sides can agree (excluding perhaps the Catholics) that in this day and age with medical science where its at and with so many decades worth of good family planning options available, it is insanity that 1.2 million people are having unplanned pregnancies every year. The morality question attached to abortion would be relatively moot if people weren't getting unintentionally knocked up.
Before I end this post, some other surprising facts I found related to abortion:
- 28% of abortions were performed on women who identified themselves as Catholics
- 50% of abortions were done on women in their 20s.
- 61% of abortions were done on women who already had a child.
- 7% of abortions were done on women who claimed they had used protection properly (e.g., pill, condom)
- ~33% of white women will have an abortion in their lifetime (11 per 1000 per year, over an average 30 year reproductive life)*
- ~84% of Hispanic women in the US will have an abortion in their lifetime (28 per 1000 per year, over an average 30 year reproductive life)*
- ~150% of African American women will have an abortion in their lifetime (50 per 1000 per year, over an average 30 year reproductive life). This over unity percentage means that the average African American woman will have more than one abortion in her lifetime.*
Most shocking are the differences in abortion rates between whites and non-whites. We can probably assume the primary explanation is socio-economic, a side effect of reduced quality of education, reduced availability of health resources (including contraception and pregnancy prevention education).
* These numbers were based on statistics cited in this Time Magazine article. while the math was based on the source for the rest of these statistics, an article on induced abortions from the Guttmacher Institute.
