Reasons for Abortion

Bernie sent me this chart a few months back. Purportedly, it originates with the CDC and breaks down by percentages the main reasons given for women having abortions in the US during some unspecified period. Bernie (wisely) included the stipulation that he was “looking to verify numbers from a second source”. He added, “But this is pretty much exactly what I suspected so I’m inclined to believe it.”

Me too. Still, let’s do our due diligence.

To start with, here’s the chart, wherever its contents may have originated:

That’s pretty scary, in that it strongly suggests over 95% of abortions are essentially frivolous; which is to say they value a woman’s perceived quality of life over the existence of her unborn child. To put it another way, they are choices made primarily out of the fear of some negative outcome long before the actual outcome could be quantified. I find such decisions morally unjustifiable, and I think most Christians do too.

Confirmation and Methodology

Anyway, I eventually got around to trying to confirm the information in Bernie’s chart. I was not able to find anything online from the CDC that looked like this, but an earlier study makes the numbers potentially even worse for abortion advocates. From Biomed Central Women’s Health, this 2013 study gives a more detailed breakdown of the reasons women gave for having an abortion. The paper is by M. Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould and Diane Greene Foster. The study included 954 women from 30 abortion facilities across the US, so it was certainly big enough and expansive enough to provide useful data.

Here is their methodology in their own words:

“All participants were asked two open-ended questions about their reasons for seeking an abortion. The first question asked ‘What are the reasons that you decided to have an abortion?’ followed by a prompt asking for any other reasons until the respondent says that is all. The second questions asked ‘What would you say was the main reason you decided to have an abortion?’ Generally participants were not able to narrow their answers to one reason and sometimes even gave additional reasons to this last question making it difficult to discern a ‘main’ reason. Therefore, the answers to both questions were combined to identify all reasons given by respondents for seeking abortion.”

In case that’s unclear, including every reason 954 women deemed to be significant factors in their choice to abort causes the actual total to be more than 100%. The “total” below is therefore not a true total. Nevertheless, the answers these women provided are fascinating in their consistent banality.

Here’s the data from the chart optimized for phone readers and a link to the study.

Table 2  Major themes and reasons women gave for seeking abortion (n=954)

	Freq.	Percent
Not financially prepared	386	40%
General financial	365	38%
Unemployed/underemployed	41	4%
Uninsured or can't get welfare	6	0.6%
Don't want government assistance	4	0.4%
Not the right time for a baby	347	36%
Bad timing/not ready/unplanned	321	34%
Too busy/not enough time	17	2%
Too old	16	2%
Partner related reasons	298	31%
Relationship is bad, poor and/or new	89	9%
Respondent wants to be married first/not a single mom	80	8%
Partner is not supportive	77	8%
Partner is wrong guy	61	6%
Partner does not want baby	29	3%
Partner is abusive	24	3%
Need to focus on other children	275	29%
Too soon after having had a child/busy enough with current children/    have enough children right now	239	25%
Concern for other children she is rearing	51	5%
Interferes with future opportunities	194	20%
Interferes with educational plans	132	14%
Interferes with vocational plans	63	7%
Want better life for self/don't want to limit future opportunities	49	5%
Not emotionally or mentally prepared	180	19%
Health related reasons	114	12%
Concern for her own health	59	6%
Concern for the health of the fetus	51	5%
Drug, tobacco, or alcohol use	46	5%
Prescription drug (not illicit) or contraceptive use	14	1.5%
Want a better life for the baby than she could provide	119	12%
Want better life for baby	67	7%
Living or housing context not suitable for baby	46	5%
Lack of childcare or help from family to care for baby	13	1.4%
Don't want her children to have a childhood like hers	5	0.5%
Not independent or mature enough for a baby	64	7%
Too young or immature	47	5%
Can't take care of self	12	1.3%
Too dependent on parents or others right now	9	0.9%
Influences from family or friends	48	5%
Would have a negative impact on family or friends	22	2%
Don't want others to know/worried others would judge	19	2%
Pressure from family or friends	11	1.2%
Don't want a baby or place baby for adoption	38	4%
Don't want a baby or don't want any children	33	3%
Don't want adoption	7	0.7%
Other	11	1.2%
Total	954	100%

What is interesting, however, is that rape, danger to the life of the mother and serious fetal abnormalities were not factors cited by any of the 954 respondents, unless they fall into the category “Other”, in which case the number is something less than 1.2% of the total (11 out of 954). It’s reasonable to assume “medically necessary” abortions would have been performed in hospitals rather than standalone abortion facilities, and thus would not have been covered by this survey, though rape victims seeking to end a pregnancy may well have participated. If so, not one respondent mentioned it, despite repeated questioning. The “health related” issues cited here by respondents are not backed by medical opinions and are simply labeled as “concerns”. Even if considered medically valid, they max out at 12% of the total.

What is apparent is that unless the situation has changed drastically since 2013, the only possible reasons for abortion Christians might be persuaded to consider remotely plausible and moral form such an insignificant subset of the total reasons for American abortions that they may as well not even be mentioned.