New York City has a 41% abortion rate, twice natl average, that hasn't budged

[alp227]

City’s High Abortion Rate Defies Easy Explanation
by Anemona Hartocollis
NY Times, Feb. 3, 2011

At a time when evidence suggests that people in New York City are smoking less, eating better and biking more, one health statistic that has not budged is the abortion rate.

Two of every five pregnancies in the city end in abortion, a statistic that has barely changed in more than a decade. At a news conference last month, Timothy M. Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, called the city’s 41 percent abortion rate “downright chilling,” and on Thursday, State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx brought up the figure repeatedly as he urged a group of anti-abortion ministers to spread the word that abortion was nothing less than an attack on minorities: "They might think that we will take over, and that they’ve got to stop us,” said Senator Diaz, who also is a minister. “What they did, they are killing black and Hispanic children."

Nationally, the issue is receiving a new round of attention, with numerous state legislatures and the House of Representatives considering bills that would add restrictions on abortion, and Planned Parenthood was recently a target of undercover videos by an anti-abortion group.

But city health officials and groups that support access to abortion say that behind the 41 percent statistic — nearly twice the national rate — are complex social and legal factors: fewer obstacles to abortion in state law; the absence of mandatory sex education in New York City public schools; the ignorance of people, especially young ones, about where to get affordable birth control; and the ambivalence of young women living in poverty and in unstable relationships about when and whether to have children.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/nyregion/04abortion.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Or on tomorrow's print edition.

[aquart]

1. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

There are eight million people here experiencing heavy cutbacks in services. You want more of us?

And I'd be real interested in where they got their statistics.

[TheWraith]

2. Well, yes, it IS a bad thing.

The "ideal" abortion rate would be strictly for medical conditions or pre-natal growth defects that would threaten the life or quality of life of either the mother or the child, and for "unwanted pregnancies" to be prevented entirely, or to be a statistical noise level due to accidents. For the current rate to be so high, some people have to be using abortion as a form of birth control, which is bad, both for the fact that it's riskier for the mother and that it's more expensive than preemptive measures such as hormonal birth control and condoms, which should be trumpeted to every single citizen as the first line of responsible sexual behavior.

[mrcheerful]

3. Where else they pulled them out of their ass. What gives them their numbers is standing outside of c

clinics where abortions are performed and planned parent hood counting every woman that goes in either, never mind facts like not every woman that enters either are seeking or receiving abortions, but hey why let facts get in the way. I still remember the 70 year old that went to a woman's clinic seeking other medical services who was pissed off because the nit wits standing outside the clinic were yelling at her not to go through with killing her baby.

[HockeyMom]

5. Yeah, happened to me

I was in my early 50s and went to my dentist in the PP building for a root canal. Some old geezer (who else) stopped me and said don't kill your baby! Guy must have been blind too. I PUSHED him out of my way and said get out of my face or I will make you get out of my face. Don't mess with somebody with a TOOTH ACHE.

Another time took my then 4 year old daughter to the same dentist. Was it the same old geezer? Don't know, but he patted my daughter on the head and gave me their literature. My daughter hit him (didn't like strangers patting her head) and I told him to keep his hands off my daughter. I then took his pamphlets, ripped them up in front of him, and went in to the dentist. Don't mess with a PROCHOICE MOTHER.

[Pab Sungenis]

4. We'd be better off if we could prevent conception

than aborting the results of it.

Contraceptives, birth control, and sex education are the best way of reducing the number of abortions. They cut down on unwanted pregnancies that result in abortions.