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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
A recently completed study by the Guttmacher Institute found that 1.2 million abortions were performed in America in 2005—the lowest annual rate since 1976. Abortion rates in the U.S. have been dropping fairly steadily since the early 1990s.
While the study doesn’t identify specific causes for the drop, its researchers have some ideas:
"It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies. It could be more restrictions on abortions making it more difficult for women to obtain abortion services. It could be a combination of these and other dynamics," said Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization, which published the report in the March issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
While the report’s findings are promising for anyone interested in making abortion safe and rare, some of its specifics are less encouraging. 87% of counties in the U.S. lack an abortion provider—which means that 24% of women who live in metropolitan counties and 92% of women who live in nonmetropolitan counties face serious barriers to access.
I’m also curious about the age distribution of the study, which isn’t broken down in the copy I read. According to other info from Guttmacher, 33% of abortions are obtained by women aged 20-25, and 17% of abortions are obtained by teenagers. The teen birth rate jumped in 2005 for the first time in over 15 years, likely due in large part to the simultaneous promulgation and ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.
So what do we make of these seemingly conflicted numbers? Fewer women are having abortions, but more young women are getting pregnant. It seems we’ve failed to provide young women with the tools they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place: sufficient education about and access to birth control. It’s time to give up on what we know doesn’t work—if this isn’t an argument for eschewing abstinence-only in favor of comprehensive sex ed, I don’t know what is.
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""While the report’s findings are promising for anyone interested in making abortion safe and rare, some of its specifics are less encouraging. 87% of counties in the U.S. lack an abortion provider—which means that 24% of women who live in metropolitan counties and 92% of women who live in nonmetropolitan counties face serious barriers to access.""
Not having an abortion provider in your county is not necessarily a 'serious barrier to access' - it depends how far away you are and a host of other things. Having to drive an hour each way to the abortion clinic isn't fun, but it's not a "serious barrier" to something as serious as an abortion. I don't dispute the fact that some women in America face serious barriers to access, but that doesn't mean your linking that to the percentage living in a county without an abortion clinic is accurate.
""The teen birth rate jumped in 2005 for the first time in over 15 years, likely due in large part to the simultaneous promulgation and ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.""
That's possible, but it's not the only "likely" explanation. We've had significant abstinence-only education funding in America since 1996 - Clinton wasn't half bad as a president on the whole, but he was a triangulating, insincere SOB who was willing to throw important social causes under the bus when it suited him politically. There was another major increase in funding for abstinence-only education in 2000, again during Clinton's presidency.
If the rates are just now starting to tick upwards, there are a number of possible explanations, and the real explanation is probably a combo of factors. But we shouldn't always rush to pin our own favored policy position as the perfect explanation for whatever sociological data we come across.
You're right that studies show abstinence based sex education doesn't seem to be effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies. BUT something you never seem to mention in your numerous blogs on the subject is that these same studies show that non-abstinence based sex education, if anything is even more ineffective at preventing unwanted pegnancy and STDs.
The sad truth is that sex education, of whatever sort, has a long history of being ineffective. If you know of any studies to the contrary, please post a link.
Douglas Kirby's 2002 survey of pre-existing literature in the Journal of Sex Research found nothing conclusive either way.
I don't know of any study that indicates comprehensive sex ed leads to higher rates of STDs or unwanted pregnancies (and, since only students in comprehensive programs receive education about contraception and birth control, and since the rates of sexual activity are, at least according to the Texas Dept. of Health study in 2005, nearly identical in students given either comprehensive or abstinence-only sex ed, I find the idea somewhat implausible).
And that's all leaving aside the Waxman Report, which found that abstinence-only programs are, in many cases, based on simply feeding the students abject bullshit and hoping they believe it.
So, can YOU please tell me what study you're talking about that says comprehensive programs are "if anything even more ineffective"? Because I can't think of any that have said anything like that, and it sounds pretty implausible.
There is a lot more that needs to be looked at into these percentages. At this rate, Roe mindaswell be overturned, because it seems as if "laws" will continue to cause a barrier to the rights of women.