Abortion Statistics By State: 1 Of 6 Pregnancies In Michigan Are Terminated
One out of every six pregnancies in Michigan in 2015 ended in an abortion, according to local reports Monday. Of the 164,439 pregnancies, 27,151 were terminated, according to data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. While that might seem startling to some, the number of abortions was a 2 percent decline from 2014.
Black women in the state were five times more likely than whites to get an abortion. Roughly one in three pregnancies for black women resulted in an abortion when compared to one in ten for whites.
Michigan is one of a small number of states in the U.S. where the number of abortion rose in the last five years. Abortions in Michigan hit a record low in 2009, a year when 22,357 abortions were performed.
The abortion rate in the U.S. was 14.6 per 1000 women in 2014, which was the lowest it had been since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized the operation nationwide in 1973. It declined every decade since the rate peaked at 29.3 between the years of 1980 and 1981.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told NPR Tuesday the low abortion rate was the result of women having more access to contraceptives like birth control pills. Richards added teen women were more educated about pregnancies through school programs. Additionally, they have better access to affordable medicine. All together, this resulted in less unintended pregnancies.
The number of teen abortions in Michigan was recorded to be 2,568 in 2015, which was a historic low since abortion became legal and 11 percent less than the number of teen abortions performed in 2014.
Roughly 61 percent of the women in Michigan who got an abortion in 2015 were in their 20s. Of all of the abortions performed in the state in 2015, 33 percent were between the ages of 20 and 24 and 29 percent were between 25 and 29.
Researchers in Michigan said the sharp increase in abortions in the state between the years 2012 and 2013 were the result of Ohio implementing harsh restrictions on doctors performing the operation in 2011 that made the operation substantially more expensive and harder to obtain. Doctors in Michigan performed 531 abortions on out-of-state residents in 2010, but after the law passed, doctors conducted 1,155 abortions surgeries.
The Ohio law made it so abortion providers could not control the dosage when prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol, which are two drugs used to carefully terminate early pregnancies. The law required women to take a higher dosage of the drugs, which in addition to making the operation more costly, leads to tremendous side effects for women such as nausea.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.