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Abortion
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The purpose of this page is to give facts.  I will leave the moralizing to others.  

Roe v Wade, which stopped the states from making their individual decisions on abortion, was made January 22, 1973.   For a full wording of Roe v Wade, see http://members.aol.com/abtrbng/410us113.htm .  Note that before Roe v Wade, 18 states had anti-abortion laws or constitutional provisions, prohibiting abortion.  If Roe v Wade is overturned, these states would probably continue to outlaw abortions.  

Essentially, the "legal" abortion rate rose immediately after the ruling ( in other words, the 1972 abortion statistics do not have the accuracy of the later years ), but has plummeted since that time to about what it was in 1972.  We do not know how many illegal abortions occurred in 1972.  

 

U.S. Abortion Statistics, 1972–2000
  1972 1980 1985 1990 1995 1997 1999 2000
Reported no.
 legal abortions		 586,760 1,297,606 1,328,570 1,429,247 1,210,883 1,186,039 861,789 857,475
Abortion ratio1 180 359 354 344 311 306 256 245
Abortion rate2 13 25 24 24 20 20 17 16
  Percentage distribution
Age group (yrs)                
 <=19 32.6% 29.2% 26.3% 22.4% 20.1% 20.1% 19.2% 18.8%
 20–24 32.5 35.5 34.7 33.2 32.5 31.7 32.2 32.8
 >=25 34.9 35.3 39.0 44.4 47.4 48.2 48.6 48.4
Marital status                
 Married 29.7 23.1 19.3 21.7 19.7 19.0 19.2 18.7
 Unmarried 70.3 76.9 80.7 78.3 80.3 81.0 80.8 81.3

NOTE: The number of areas reporting a given characteristic varied.

1. Number of legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births.

2. Number of legal induced abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Abortion Surveillance: Preliminary Analysis—United States, 2000.

Note that the number of abortions appears to have increased in the first four years of the Bush presidency.  See http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2004/10/11/oped-stassen1011-5709.html

 

Detailed CDC data from 1995 to 1999:

Item 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Total abortions 1 1,211 1,222 900 884 6 862 6 857
Decrease in total abortions over previous year 4.5% -0.9% 5 3.3% 2% 6 2.5% 6 0.5%
% of abortions performed on women under 20 years of age 20.1 20.3% 20.1% 19.8% 19.2% 18.8%
% of abortions on women 20 to 24 years 32.5% 31.8% 31.7% 31.8 32.2 33%
Number of deaths 2 ? 10   10 4 -
% unmarried women 80.3% 80.4% 81.0% 81.1% 80.8 81%
Average abortion ratio 3 311 314 274 264 256 246
Abortion rate 4 20 20 17 17 17 16
% of abortions under 9 weeks gestation 54.0 54.6% 55.4% 55.7% 57.6% 58%
% of abortions under 13 weeks gestation 88% 87% 88.1 88.1% 88.0% 88%
% of abortions over 20 weeks gestation 1.4% 1.5% 1.4% 1.4% 1.5% 1.4
Date report issued ? 1999-JUL 2000-DEC 2002-JUN 2002-NOV 2003?

Notes for the above table:

  1. In thousands.
  2. This row gives the number of deaths due to complications from legal induced abortions.
  3. Abortion ratio is the number of legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births.
  4. Abortion rate is the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years.
  5. The total number of legal abortions in the U.S. increased by 0.89% from 1995 to 1996. However, this number is deceptive, since the national population increased by about 0.92% from mid-1995 to mid-1996. 6 Thus, the number of abortions per-capita may have actually decreased slightly.
  6. These values were heavily influenced by missing data from Alaska, California, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.
  7. These values were heavily influenced by missing data from Alaska, California, and New Hampshire.

An excellent analysis of who gets abortions can be found at http://www.guttmacher.org/tables/3422602charts.pdf or here.  The data shows that women who procure an abortion are young, single, poor, and already have one or more children, and are more likely to be a ethnic minority than are the rest of the women of child bearing age.

Worldwide Abortion Statistics
Approximately 46 million abortions were performed worldwide in 1995 (Table 1). Of these, about 26 million were legal and 20 million illegal.‡  The abortion rate worldwide was about 35 per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages and stillbirths), 26% were terminated by abortion.§

Table 1. Estimated number of induced abortions, by legal status, percentage of all abortions that are illegal, abortion rate and abortion ratio, all according to region and subregion, 1995
Region and subregion No. of abortions (millions) % illegal Rate* Ratio†
Total Legal Illegal
Total 45.5 25.6 19.9 44 35 26
Developed regions 10.0 9.1 0.9 9 39 42
Excluding Eastern Europe 3.8 3.7 0.1 3 20 26
Developing regions 35.5 16.5 19.0 54 34 23
Excluding China 24.9 5.9 19.0 76 33 20
Africa 5.0 ‡ 5.0 99 33 15
Eastern Africa 1.9 ‡ 1.9 100 41 16
Middle Africa 0.6 ‡ 0.6 100 35 14
Northern Africa 0.6 ‡ 0.6 96 17 12
Southern Africa 0.2 ‡ 0.2 100 19 12
Western Africa 1.6 ‡ 1.6 100 37 15
Asia 26.8 16.9 9.9 37 33 25
Eastern Asia 12.5 12.5 ‡ § 36 34
South-central Asia 8.4 1.9 6.5 78 28 18
South-eastern Asia 4.7 1.9 2.8 60 40 28
Western Asia 1.2 0.7 0.5 42 32 20
Europe 7.7 6.8 0.9 12 48 48
Eastern Europe 6.2 5.4 0.8 13 90 65
Northern Europe 0.4 0.3 ‡ 8 18 23
Southern Europe 0.8 0.7 0.1 12 24 34
Western Europe 0.4 0.4 ‡ § 11 17
Latin America 4.2 0.2 4.0 95 37 27
Caribbean 0.4 0.2 0.2 47 50 35
Central America 0.9 ‡ 0.9 100 30 21
South America 3.0 ‡ 3.0 100 39 30
Northern America 1.5 1.5 ‡ § 22 26
Oceania 0.1 0.1 ‡ 22 21 20
*Abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44. †Abortions per 100 known pregnancies. (Known pregnancies are defined as abortions plus live births.) ‡Fewer than 50,000. §Less than 0.5%. Notes: Developed regions include Europe, Northern America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan; all others are considered developing. Regions are as defined by the United Nations (UN) (see Appendix). Numbers do not add to totals due to rounding. Sources: Populations--UN, The Sex and Age Distribution of the World Population, The 1996 Revision, New York: UN, 1997. Births--UN, World Population Prospects: The 1996 Revision, Annex II & III, Demographic indicators by major area, region and country, New York: UN, 1996. Illegal abortions-- WHO, 1998, op. cit. (see reference 4). Legal abortions--see text.

 

There are many reasons why abortion has plummeted - the rate of having sex in the young years has plummeted ( better morals and better education and the scare of aids ), the rate of pregnancies among the  young has plummeted ( same reasons ), and there is better availability of birth control measures.  

RU486  ( mifepristone ) has also had a pleasant effect ( less abortions ).  An excellent article on it ( and I mean excellent ) can be found at
http://www.naral.org/facts/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=9709 or here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Last modified: March 19, 2006