With this week's anniversary of the historic Roe . Wade court decision, both sides of the choice war will be gearing up to fight about all the different aspects of choice - laws outlawing abortion, laws to inform America's youth on safe sex, and everything else that the broad umbrellas of pro-choice and pro-life (or anti-choice, as they should be described) entails. It is in this light that MSNBC recently released a story about what type of women are having abortions. In addition, The Guttmacher Institute also released new facts and number, many of which were used as sources in the MSNBC article.
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...Much of the public debate focuses on teens, as evidenced by the constant wranging over parental notification laws and movies like the current hit "Juno," in which the pregnant heroine heads to an abortion clinic, then decides to have the baby.
It appears that most women - 50% by Guttmacher's count - are over 25 when they have abortions. 33% are 20-24, and only 17% are teenagers (all numbers from Guttmacher). Most abortions are obtained by women who have never been married or have at least one child (again, all numbers from Guttmacher). Guttmacher also goes into great detail regarding contraceptive use, but that's another post for another time.
I was most struck by the fact that women under 25 are having half of all abortions in this country. Women of my generation, Gen Y, are the first generation of women to not have an institutional memory of illegal abortion. We don't know what it's like to not have the choice to terminate an unintended pregnancy. We don't know what it's like to worry about dirty doctors with dirty instruments causing infections, or women trying desperately to induced their own miscarriages at home. But apparently, we are actively taking advantage of our right to choose, and we are making smart decisions based on our situations in life.
As with all things, this story shows everyone why it's important to vote pro-choice in November. President Bush has created an atmosphere in which only 13% of US counties have abortion clinics, making safe and legal abortion hard to access for most women. In addition, Congress has voted 54 times on choice bills, and anti-choice forces have won 44 times, all since President Bush took office in 2001. Finally, during President Bush's two terms, he signed the Federal Abortion Ban, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the Federal Refusal Clause - all anti-choice victories (see NARAL Pro-Choice America for statistics). We must vote pro-choice in order to protect our rights, change the anti-choice track President Bush has set us on, and ensure that every woman can make her own decision regarding her own body.