Abortions by Teenagers on Decline, Study Finds
Fewer teenagers are having abortions, according to a survey of nearly 10,000 women who have had the procedure. Six in 10 of the women say they were using contraceptives that failed.
The study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, to be published today, provides the most extensive look at who gets abortions since the nonprofit organization’s last check in 1987.
While government data show 1.3 million Americans have abortions every year, it provides very little information on the demographics of abortion.
Although Guttmacher is affiliated with Planned Parenthood and is regarded as being on the abortion-rights side in the debate, the government often cites its abortion figures as reliable supplements to the meager federal data.
The Guttmacher report confirms that most women who get abortions are white and middle-class because they make up the bulk of the nation’s women of childbearing age.
Young women still are most likely to get abortions, but the teenagers’ share has dropped, from 25.5% in 1987 to 21.5% last year, Guttmacher researchers discovered.
“We can’t entirely account for that” drop, said study author Stanley Henshaw, who noted that the overall U.S. abortion rate has dropped about 10% in recent years while the rate of teenagers who gave birth rose.
“Part of the reason is that they’re continuing more of their pregnancies,” he added.
At the same time, 57.5% of abortion recipients surveyed say they were using a contraceptive the month they became pregnant. That’s a rise from the 51.3% in 1987, and the increase was greatest among teenagers, Henshaw said.
No contraceptive is perfect, but studies show they usually fail when they’re misused. A second study that appears today in Guttmacher’s journal, Family Planning Perspectives, found that half of 103 college students given the birth control pill were skipping at least three pills a month.
Using a contraceptive “helps you, but you’re still taking a chance if you’re not using it correctly every time,” Henshaw said.
