High Abortion Rates Linked to Hard Times

Jan 19, 11:04 PM

NEW YORK (AP) - In American pop culture, the face of abortion is often a frightened teenager, nervously choosing to terminate an unexpected pregnancy. The numbers tell a far more complex story in which financial stress can play a pivotal role.

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 at least one child prior to getting an abortion.

A disproportionately high number are black or Hispanic. And regardless of race, high abortion rates are linked to hard times.

Year after year the statistics reveal that black women and economically struggling women - who have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies - are far more likely than others to have abortions. About 13 percent of American women are black, yet new figures from the Centers for Disease Control show they account for 35 percent of the abortions.

Black abortion opponents depict this phenomenon in dire terms - "genocide" and "holocaust," for example. But often the women getting the abortions say they act in the interests of children they already have.

"It wasn't a hard decision for me to make, because I knew where I wanted to go in my life - I've never regretted it," said Kimberly Mathias, 28, an African-American single mother from Missouri.

She had an abortion at 19, when she already raising a 2-year-old son.

She was able to graduate from college, now has an insurance job, and - still a single mother - has a 3-year-old son as well as her first-born, now 11.

By contrast, Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr., calls herself a "reformed murderer" for undergoing two abortions when she was young.

Now an outspoken abortion opponent, King says the best way to reduce abortions among black women is to dissuade more of them from premarital sex.

"We give free sex education, free condoms, free birth control," she complained. "That's almost like permission to have free sex, and the higher the rate of sexual activity, the higher the rate of unintended pregnancy."

Abortion opponent Day Gardner, of the National Black Pro-Life Union, says many blacks are unaware of their community's high abortion rate.

"We don't talk about it," Gardner said. "It's a silent killer among us."

She contends that abortion-rights supporters tempt black women into abortion by suggesting they can't afford to raise the child. But Gardner also acknowledges that some black women make this argument on their own.

"We had the whole civil rights movement - now we're in a place where we're moving further toward equality," Gardner said. "So women think,'For once, I can see the American dream. I can have the house and the job, but it would postpone it to have another child. I can't afford to take time off.'"

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, a black physician who is Planned Parenthood's national vice president for medical affairs, said the allegations of "black genocide" do not help women meet day-to-day challenges.

"These actions take attention away from medically proven ways to reduce unintended pregnancy - comprehensive sex education, affordable birth control, and open and honest conversations about relationships," she said

Looking beyond racial dividing lines, Cullins views the right to abortion as an important component in the ability of all American women to determine the right size for their family.

"Groups that become assimilated in U.S. culture and experience economic opportunities naturally decide to limit family size, because they want to take part in the American dream," she said. "If you're a single mother, achieving the dream is all the harder, so it makes sense to limit family size so you can shower as much support as you can on the children you have."

(c) 2008 Telegraph - Herald (Dubuque). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. High Abortion Rates Linked to Hard Times
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