Women have abortions at all stages in their lives, from their teenage years right up until the menopause. Although the abortion rate is higher in younger women, it has dropped a lot in teenagers.
Women are also more likely to have abortions at later ages. The main differences between women who have abortions at different ages is in their reasons for doing so.
Meanwhile, older women have their own concerns about pregnancy. Some may already have families and feel unable to manage a new addition. Others may be focused on the careers that they have built or feel unable to cope with motherhood at this stage in their lives. Older women are also more likely to experience complications during pregnancy or to have medical reasons for considering an abortion. Abortion is a complex subject.
Barriers to birth control play a major role. Among women with unintended pregnancies, 54 percent were using no birth control. Another 41 percent were inconsistently using birth control at the time of conception.
Abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care. Approximately 25 percent of women in the U. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy institute in New York City, has been tracking these data for the last 50 years. American women have abortions with similar frequency to women living in other developed nations. The bulk of abortion patients are in their 20s. Women of all races and ethnicities choose abortion. In , 39 percent of abortion patients were white, 28 percent were black and 25 percent were Latina.
Similarly, women of all religious affiliations choose to end their pregnancies. Most of these women understand what it means to parent a child. More than half of abortion patients in were already mothers. Poor women account for the majority of abortion patients. Fifty-three percent of women pay out-of-pocket for their abortion.
The rest use private or state-funded insurance plans. Women choose abortion for multiple reasons. The age-standardised abortion rate was This was 0. It is the lowest abortion rate for 16 years. However, the age group with the highest abortion rate seems to be getting older. In , it was highest for women aged 22 at 30 per 1, women. The previous year, it was highest for women aged 21 at 31 per 1, The abortion rates among the teenage population are lower and have been falling: in , the rate among unders was 2.
These figures are both lower than the previous year 3. As the Department of Health report states, the Abortion Act permits the termination of a pregnancy abortion by a registered medical practitioner subject to certain conditions. A legally induced abortion must be certified by two registered medical practitioners and is carried out on the grounds of one of five reasons A to E :. Most abortions related to unwanted or unplanned pregnancy will usually be carried out on grounds C or, rarely, grounds D for example, if the woman has other children who she feels she wouldn't be able to care for adequately if she had another.
Virtually all of these Nearly half of the 2, abortions carried out on grounds E were because of identified congenital abnormalities, a third of these being caused by chromosomal abnormalities most commonly, Down's syndrome. The study reported varied information about the lifestyle characteristics of women undergoing abortion in The media has made sweeping statements about women's motivations and needs for abortion loosely based on these findings.
However, the report provides figures only. The Department of Health report does not discuss possibilities for changes in trends, and all media reports of "career girl" or "lifestyle" abortions suggesting abortion is sometimes used as a method of contraception are pure speculation, with no foundation in this report.
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