Who gets abortions and why?
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 850,000 legal induced abortions were reported for 2003. Eighty-five percent of those were for women who were unmarried, 55 percent were for white women and 51 percent were for women younger than 25. Hoskins says that most women terminating pregnancies fall into two broad categories: • Those for whom abortion is medically indicated, meaning that their own health is threatened by the pregnancy or that testing indicates serious abnormalities in the fetus that “are not compatible with good quality of life.” • Those facing “psychosocial” issues: they were not planning to become pregnant and don’t feel they can handle — or afford — a child at the stage of life in which they have become pregnant, or they already have children and feel their families are complete.
