Upcoming Roe v Wade Anniversary
It's the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (just wrote "Rove v Wade"!) this Tuesday, so abortion statistics and articles have been popping out of the woodwork lately.
MSNBC (shockingly) had an article I found surprising in several ways.
Who's getting abortions? Not who you'd think
"Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion."
It was the last sentence that really surprised me, but I think that's due to the preponderance of younger, childless people on teh internetz, so fewer people on Livejournal have not had previous children when they choose abortion. The article makes the argument that women who have finished having their families often choose to abort unintended pregnancy for financial reasons. Maybe, but even though half of women getting abortions are over 25, only 17% of them are married. Maybe that's an indication that even the older women choosing abortion might not be in a stable situation where they feel comfortable raising a child. I wish they included other categories, like co-habiting or engaged, etc, because "Married" and "Unmarried" really doesn't elucidate much.
Their graph also makes the drop in abortions very dramatic. I hope that's because of increased access to birth control and more sex ed, but it seems like there's some uncertainty about why.
I need to read more stuff by the Guttmacher Institute, because I don't know a lot of these statistics.
MSNBC (shockingly) had an article I found surprising in several ways.
Who's getting abortions? Not who you'd think
"Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion."
It was the last sentence that really surprised me, but I think that's due to the preponderance of younger, childless people on teh internetz, so fewer people on Livejournal have not had previous children when they choose abortion. The article makes the argument that women who have finished having their families often choose to abort unintended pregnancy for financial reasons. Maybe, but even though half of women getting abortions are over 25, only 17% of them are married. Maybe that's an indication that even the older women choosing abortion might not be in a stable situation where they feel comfortable raising a child. I wish they included other categories, like co-habiting or engaged, etc, because "Married" and "Unmarried" really doesn't elucidate much.
Their graph also makes the drop in abortions very dramatic. I hope that's because of increased access to birth control and more sex ed, but it seems like there's some uncertainty about why.
I need to read more stuff by the Guttmacher Institute, because I don't know a lot of these statistics.