NEWS ARTICLE, "THE CHANGING FACE OF ABORTION," BY TEVAH PLATT, STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE (2/29/08)

Nearly 1 in 3 women, most in 20s and 30s, terminate pregnancy

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Maria's second pregnancy was unplanned, and, it seemed at first, ill-timed. The then 35-year-old woman -- a Latina resident of Clifton -- was already raising a 7-year-old daughter on her own, and working long hours to make ends meet. Her relationship with the would-be father was unsteady, and she worried she would never be able to be her family's sole provider while nurturing a newborn baby. Her first thought was to have an abortion.

Images from popular culture often associate abortion with frightened teenagers, but Maria's case more aptly represents the face of abortion in Staten Island, New York City and throughout the United States.

The numbers show that the majority of women who decide to terminate their pregnancies are in their 20s or 30s. About 61 percent have previously given birth to at least one child, and a disproportionate number are black or Hispanic. And regardless of race, high abortion rates are linked to economic hard times.

Some 2,729 Island women -- or nearly a third of the 8,549 who were expecting -- made the difficult decision to end their pregnancies in 2006, according to the city's latest available vital statistics -- and the women represented virtually every demographic sector.

"There are as many reasons [why some women have abortions] as there are stars in the sky," said Joanne Reilly, executive director of the Crisis Pregnancy Center, New Dorp, an agency that does not perform or offer referrals for abortions but informs pregnant women and girls about their options and rights. "Some say they have their own lives. Some are petrified about what their family would say. Some girls are coerced by a boyfriend. For a lot of middle-aged women or older young people, it may be that their husband is out of work and they just don't know how they could afford another baby."

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision, which established women's right to choose nationwide, much of the public debate has centered on teens and parental notification laws in each state.

But nationwide, roughly half of the 1.2 million women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. On Staten Island and throughout the country, less than 20 percent of those who undergo abortions each year are in their teens.

Department of Health statistics show that Staten Island has the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in the city.

Some 228 Staten Island teens, aged 15 to 17, had abortions in 2006, accounting for less than .3 percent of the city's total number of induced terminations, according to city records.

Who are the Island women facing unwanted pregnancies?

The short answer is all kinds.

About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, according to the Guttmacher Institute -- a pro-choice research organization that collects national data.

But local statistics corroborate the national trend: Disproportionate numbers of women seeking abortions are black or Hispanic. And while women from every economic class decide to end their pregnancies, struggling women are far more likely than others to make that choice.

About 13 percent of American women are black, yet the Centers for Disease Control reports they account for 35 percent of abortions nationwide.

Black and Latina women have higher abortion rates primarily because they have higher rates of unintended pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

"The reasons behind unintended pregnancy are complex," said Samantha Levine, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood. "We know that access to health care and comprehensive sex education, two components that are often hard to come by, help cut down on unintended pregnancy rates."

Wagner College professor Jean Halley, who teaches a sociology course on womanhood, argues the imbalance is symptomatic of a "racist society" that privileges white people over people of color.

"With money, and with white privilege, comes increased power for women to demand the use of -- and to have ready access to -- contraceptives in their sexual encounters," said Dr. Halley.
Some pro-life activists describe the trend in more dire terms, reading programs of eugenics into the numbers.

Year after year, the numbers show financial stress plays a decisive role for many women weighing their prenatal options.

Fifty-seven percent of U.S. women who have abortions are economically disadvantaged, according to Guttmacher data, and the abortion rate among women living below the poverty line is more than four times greater than that among relatively affluent women. Over the past decade, the Institute reports that unintended pregnancy rates have gone up among poor women while decreasing among women with higher incomes.

Susan Hill, founder of the National Women's Health Organization, has cautioned that the statistics may not fully reflect a subgroup of more affluent women who obtain unreported abortions through their private doctors.

On Staten Island, the vast majority of women who get abortions leave the borough, heading to Manhattan or Brooklyn -- where there are more clinics, for the procedure.

Maria saw an Island doctor to discuss terminating her pregnancy in 2003. But afterward, she decided to weigh alternative options with a counselor at Pregnancy Resource Services, a pro-life agency in Port Richmond run by the faith-based Cross-Road Foundation. That conversation convinced Maria that she could handle a second child; her daughter is now almost 4.
The Crisis Pregnancy Center, like Pregnancy Resource Services, offers information, parenting classes, material assistance and post-abortion counseling.

"That's how I started here," said Ms. Reilly, who counsels women on all their options but personally believes life begins at conception. "I had an abortion in the 1980s and never got over it. A lot of people think it's a quick, easy way out, but it always hits them at some point in their life."

Others make the decision without aftershocks of regret.

A case in point: Rita, a Tottenville woman who spoke to the Advance last year, aborted her pregnancy in 2003 after learning that her baby would have Down syndrome. "I agonized over it," said the 36-year-old, Catholic mother of four. But she added, "I will never say I made a mistake."

Some 90,157 women ended their pregnancies in New York City in 2006.

It's estimated that more than one-third of adult women have had at least one abortion.