All stats in post are from About.com who I think is fairly non-partisan. All statistics I am putting in here are for the US only, since this is the only situation I know enough to comment about.
First, the numbers for abortions through the years as Niket asked…
1996 - 1,365,700 | 1985 - 1,588,600 | 1974 - 898,600
1995 - 1,363,700 | 1984 - 1,577,200 | 1973 - 774,600
1994 - 1,431,000 | 1983 - 1,575,000
1993 - 1,500,000 | 1982 - 1,573,900
1992 - 1,528,900 | 1981 - 1,577,300
1991 - 1,556,500 | 1980 - 1,553,900
1990 - 1,608,600 | 1979 - 1,497,700
1989 - 1,566,900 | 1978 - 1,409,600
1988 - 1,590,800 | 1977 - 1,316,700
1987 - 1,559,100 | 1976 - 1,179,300
1986 - 1,574,000 | 1975 - 1,034,200
[edited the figures above for readability]
In 2001, 1.31 million abortions took place.
What is more interesting of course, was this set of numbers that caught my eye -
25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing.
21.3% of women cannot afford a baby.
14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child.
12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy.)
10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career.
7.9% of women want no (more) children.
3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health.
2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health.
Which means that only 6.1% of the above abortions were medically necessary. All the rest, choices! Atleast 36.3% got the abortion since they didn’t want children just yet or that it will disrupt their career or education, in other words, having children would cramp their lifestyle.
Seriously, how many of these could have really been avoided by responsible use of contraception? One fact on the site says 54% said they used ocntraception during the month before they got pregnant - that leaves 46% using abortion as birth control. In all fairness, is it really fair to create a life and then destroy it just because you can?
I think the pro-life people are as much to blame in this as the pro-choicers. In their relegious zeal, a lot of them don’t support use of ocntraceptives (a few condoms would have Andrea Yates some good) and are trying to stifle research and availability of such emergency contraceptives as the RU-486 pill. I’d rather some one not conceive or get rid of the unwanted conception before there is time for it to develop than wait till the baby is big enough to present a grisly photo-op for the pro-lifers.
Posted by shanti at January 29, 2005 8:27 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I wonder if tackling the abortion issue is like treating the symptom instead of the disease. As a percentage of the total population, abortions certainly seemed to have decreased over the last decade. Contraception, education, social acceptance ofsingle-motherhood and adoption has gone (will go) a long way.
Side note: I don’t see why pro-choice and pro-life should be used like antonyms.
Posted by: Niket at January 29, 2005 6:25 PM
I agree I am both pro-choice and pro-life. I usually use the terms to loosely mean the extremists on both sides. The link says that the decrease in the number of abortions seems to be due the increase in emergency contraceptives. If that is the deal, I am all for them.
You know what else is interesting? We wouldn’t have all these gruesome stories, if we actually performed abortions in a humane way instead of burning them to death or tearing them limb to limb. Execution styles for serial killers and euthanasia methods for our pets seem to be a lot more humane than abortions where the typical method seems to be to do whatever it takes and not worry about the baby’s anguish for the few minutes before it dies.
I think that extremists on both sides will not make something like that possible - the pro-choicers don’t want to admit that abortions are not humane or that babies hurt when they are being killed. Pro-lifers on the other hand don’t want abortion. Period. I wish the procedure would evolve into something that would be a little more humane towards the baby.
Posted by: Shanti at January 30, 2005 4:11 PM
Geetings Shanti,
I totally agree with you and you point out something I forgot to to say on my own blog in my rant about women’s rights to their own reproductive decisions.
It SHOULD be more about being careful, responsible and using contraception. We need - (especially here in the States) better education about such things - I can not speak for the rest of the world.
But what happens is people who are very conservative and religious won’t let these things be taught in schools - although I believe a responsible parent should be the one teaching the kids about pregancy and reporductive issues. We can’t just ask the teachers and schools to do our parenting for us. But it does take a village to raise a child.
Then of course there’s the peer pressures our kids go through which is devastating for them. We need to be more concnerned about them and try to help them as they face these enormous, life-changing decisions, instrwad of bickering with each other over the end results (pregnancy vs. abortion rights) - I mean kids are kids - they are going to do what they are going to do and you can’t as a parent always be there at that critical moment.
With my daughter I was frank and open and honest. I told her what happened to me. She listened. With my son I was a little more forceful because I warned him if he got a girl pregnant it would change his life forever and that he needed to be the one more responsible. I hope he is listening - he is only 16….I pray he is listening.
As always, I love your blog.
Namaste,
Colette
Posted by: Colette at February 2, 2005 4:49 PM
Very well said, Colette - we can wear blinders and pretend our kids are innocent and will not do anything bad for them. We need to only look as far as our teenage years to remember that is not so. This is one of the reasons why I don’t like abstinence-only education. While we don’t have to encourage kids to have sex, the least we can do is to teach them to be responsible and realize what consequences might come up due to few moments of weakness.
Posted by: Shanti at February 3, 2005 8:42 AM
You would like a more humane way to kill a baby?
Murder is murder.
Posted by: daniel at February 9, 2005 6:25 PM
There is no such thing as being both pro-life and pro-choice. That is like looking at a blue wall and saying “That wall is blue and red”. No it’s not. I am pro-life and will continue that way until somebody can prove to me beyond a doubt that a human life is NOT being taken. I’ve never met a pro-choicer that could even begin to prove that an abortion does not take a life. And that is murder by anyone’s definition.
Posted by: Paul at February 10, 2005 12:25 AM
Daniel, see above - abortion is going to happen whether you want it or not. Like MD said elsewhere, sometimes there is no choice but to abort - would you rather do it humanely or in a barbaric fashion?
Paul, abortion does involve taking a life. That was my entire argument in my abortion posts - we have to admit to ourselves we are taking a life. At the same time, we cannot force a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want. It will be no different from those who force women to abort their babies. There are gray areas in life and we need to discuss them before labeling everything as black and white.
Posted by: Shanti at February 10, 2005 10:35 AM