Title: Who's getting abortions? Not who you'd think
Headings: Who's getting abortions? Not who you'd think
Who's getting abortions? Not who you'd think
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Content: Who has abortions? Activists on both sides of the abortion debate will soon be marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion. Since Jan. 22, 1973, there have been roughly 50 million abortions in the United States, and more than one-third of adult women are estimated to have had at least one. Who are these women? 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. In fact, the women come from virtually every demographic sector. But 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 anti-abortion activists 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.