Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Some Abortion Data
Yeah, I get all ambivalent about talking about abortion then I come across this article from the Washington Post (subscription required) which has some interesting stats in it.
Six in 10 women who had abortions in 2002 were mothers.Most of this info comes from The Alan Guttmacher Institute report. If you want to read it, go here and click on "An Overview of Abortion in the U.S."
In the year 2002, about 1.29 million women in the U.S. had abortions. In 1990, that number was 1.61 million.
The incidence of abortion spans the economic spectrum, but low-income women are overrepresented among those having the procedure. Sixty percent of women who had abortions in 2000 had incomes of less than twice the poverty level --below $28,000 per year for a family of three, for example. This is in part because "low-income women have lower access to family planning services" such as contraception and counseling provided by health departments, independent clinics or Planned Parenthood, Finer said.
Almost 90 percent of abortions are performed in the first trimester -- during the first 12 weeks after the first day of the woman's last menstrual period -- with most performed before nine weeks. Because of newer surgical and medical techniques, the proportion of abortions performed at six weeks or earlier has almost doubled in the past decade.