7 ms·

Being from outside of USA, can someone explain me why abortions are so common. Are regular birth control measures not available to a lot of people ?

kibwen 5y ago
Abstinence-only sex education pushed by religious fundamentalists. Prophylactics are widely available (often free from any Planned Parenthood), but demonized. "The United States ranks first among developed nations in rates of both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In an effort to reduce these rates, the U.S. government has funded abstinence-only sex education programs for more than a decade. However, a public controversy remains over whether this investment has been successful and whether these programs should be continued. Using the most recent national data (2005) from all U.S. states with information on sex education laws or policies (N = 48), we show that increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/
xphilter 5y ago
Poor education below middle class (I’d argue even for middle class, compared to international peers). Poor access to medical care below middle class. And then poverty, generally.
Schiendelman 5y ago
Are they common? I think they’re high profile, but what makes you think they’re more common than any country where they’re more available?
micromacrofoot 5y ago
The US abortion rate is pretty comparable (actually lower) to other countries with abortion access. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_statistics?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_...
- axlee 5y ago
  Your link doesn't show statistics for any comparable country?
  - belly_joe 5y ago
    The wiki article cites this link: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-... which does show many comparable countries, but it seems like much of the info is from ~10-15 years ago.
    - axlee 5y ago
      Thanks. Your link shows that the US is above all tracked western countries in terms of abortion rate, which goes against OP's point about the US having a lower abortion rate than comparable countries.
  - beardyw 5y ago
    This site has more comprehensive stats, but a bit useless without background on legislation. Mexico for instance has only recently decriminalised it. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...
fnordsensei 5y ago
I just did a quick DuckDuckGo to find some stats, but according to the first page I found, the US is not even in the top ten (the top one being Russia according to the site). The US seems roughly on par with other developed countries. It might be that it seems more common, as it seems to be a more contentious issue in the US than among its peers. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...
- refurb 5y ago
  I mean the average is around 15 and the US is 21. That said, it probably has a lot to do with pregnancy rates. Singapore has a very low rate yet access is pretty wide open. Most of that a legacy due to fear of overpopulation (they had a “stop at 2” policy for quite and while and like China, are now panicking about low birth rates).
- kibwen 5y ago
  Looking at people willing to get abortions shows ordinary rates relative to other developed countries, demonstrating that demand for abortions is inelastic among those willing to consider the option. The problem is that the US also has disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy: "Despite considerable declines in recent decades, the U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, at 57 per 1,000 in 2010, is the highest in the developed world outside the former Soviet Bloc. The next highest rate is in New Zealand (51 in 2010)." https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescent-pregnancy-and-its-outcomes-across-countries https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescent-pregnancy-a...
jquery 5y ago
Common compared to what? What’s the right number of abortions and why?
Chazprime 5y ago
Schools in the US don’t like to educate students about - or offer access to - birth control.
gameswithgo 5y ago
They are not so common, but it is one of our top two political issues. People will vote based on these issues even if all other issues run counter to their beliefs. abortion and gun rights.
temp8964 5y ago
Just because the title used the word "overwhelmingly" doesn't mean it is common. It is still rare. "overwhelmingly" in this context only means percentage among those having abortions.
thatguy0900 5y ago
They are, you can even get them for free or very cheap if you're poor. Well maybe not in Texas, you can where I'm at in Ohio. I'm not really sure that abortions are really common, it's just a hot button issue. From a quick Google search it's 195 abortions per 1,000 live births in us in 2019 and 270 in france in 2018.
BobbyJo 5y ago
Impossible to answer without knowing what you mean by "so common." The rate is around 1-2% of pregnancies [0]. I wouldn't consider that very common. If everyone with a good reason (health risks, life circumstances) to get one did so, I'd honestly expect more. Furthermore, birth control is not 100%. You can do everything right and still get pregnant. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States#Trends_in_abortion_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_U...
waserwill 5y ago
For the entire US, the rate is not very high, and has been decreasing over the last few decades; it's similar to rates in the UK and France. There's likely more variance, though, since some groups and individuals are much less likely to abort, whereas others are much more likely. The latter involves, partly: contraceptive perceptions, access, poverty, among others.
xoa 5y ago
>Being from outside of USA, can someone explain me why abortions are so common. They're... not though? Your entire premise doesn't seem to have any basis here, see ex. [0]. The US rate doesn't look dramatically different than anywhere else. It's almost identical to Sweden or Australia. Plenty of Eastern European and Asian countries are higher. The US doesn't even make the top 10. France and England are lower but not dramatically so. And a lot of the countries that claim it's low in official stats are clearly full of it, with abortions merely happening illicitly with no report. 0: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...
prasadjoglekar 5y ago
Your question has an embedded assumption about commonality. TFA, and the underlying Planned Parenthood, don't actually cite raw #s, just % increases. Here's a Google search result for per-capita data: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-.... The US is not noticeably better or worse than other countries supplying data; certainly in the same ballpark as the UK, Canada and Sweden. The US is much larger than those countries in absolute population, so the raw # is larger.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
They aren't any more common than other countries where it is legal: It might not be more common than places where it is illegal, but it is harder to count in those places and they more commonly have to look at hospitalizations after unsafe abortions to guess numbers. Regular birth control measures are available. You might not be able to afford it, though, for example: If you'd rather have birth control pills, you need to be able to afford a visit to a doctor first and that doctor may require a pelvic exam even though it isn't necessary for it. Condoms are sold at most gas stations, pharmacies, and grocery stores but I'm not aware if they'll send you condoms for free. You don't have a right to sterilisation (even after 25), so a doctor can simply refuse (it isn't unheard of for a doctor to tell a woman no if she doesn't have children - even if it will improve her health - or require her to talk to her husband about it). You also have a situation with poor sex education. So while condoms are available, how to use them properly isn't as known. Instead of information, you generally get slut shamed and told you need to wait until marriage, and then the message is that birth control isn't an issue for you then. A lot of time was taken to tell us about diseases, too, but not necessarily that some are fairly easily treated or aren't as horrible as they made it seem.
igetspam 5y ago
They're not common but the right to have one is important and we're nuts about forcing our personal morals on strangers, which is why we talk about it so much. Some very loud, obnoxious, portion of the population believes religious freedom means you're free to believe in whatever version of Cheesus you want and anyone who thinks anything else is encroaching on their rights.
lucb1e 5y ago
Are they "so common"? Citation needed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#Epidemiol... Unintended pregnancies (UPs) per 1000 women ages 15–44 years old by year and region: - 1990-1994: 66 European average vs. 50 in North America - 2010-2014: 41 European average vs. 47 in North America Specific countries report numbers differently: - Britain 2013 "16% of British pregnancies are unplanned, 29% are ambivalent, and are 55% planned" - France 2008 "33% of pregnancies are unintended" - Sweden 2013 "12% of pregnancies were fairly or very unplanned" - USA "slightly less than half (45%) of U.S. pregnancies in 2011 were unintended". Of course, UPs are not the same as abortions. Many abortions are due to an UP (USA: "Over 92% of abortions are the result of unintended pregnancy"), but not all UPs result in abortions (USA: "In 2001, 44% of unintended pregnancies resulted in births, 42% resulted in induced abortion, and the rest in miscarriage."). Looking just at abortions, Estonia has the fourth-highest* rate with 33.3 whereas Belgium has the lowest at 7.3. Europe is all over the place (and it's not as if abortions are illegal or deemed immoral in Belgium, quite the opposite). USA is at 20.8. These figures are per 1000 women from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-... So are abortions "so common"? Dunno, it seems quite high when looking at a the area I'm from (max(NL/BE/DE)=10) but it's also not through the roof. * Most countries don't have a known value for abortions though, like most of Africa/Latam/Southeast Asia and all of South America, so take "fourth highest" with a huge grain of salt.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
In Texas teaching sex education is strongly discouraged while teaching abstinence only education in public schools is mandatory. Some in the Republican party want states to be able to ban birth control as well. [1] [1] https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2022/02/21/michigan-gop-birth-control-griswold-abortion-dobbs/6879282001/ https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/... EDIT: Link to PDF about sex education in Texas https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/Report_final_web.pdf https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/Report_final_web....
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >In Texas teaching sex education is strongly discouraged while teaching abstinence only education in public schools is mandatory. Holy shit, that's even more backwards than my poor backwater Eastern European country where the Orthodox church still has big influence. Teaching sex-ed to kids and giving them free condoms is becoming the norm. How is this possible in such a wealthy, educated and developed country? No alcohol before 21, no sex before 18, etc., American kids must be going nuts over there.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    They forget religion has no place in public life, least of all education.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      This is interesting too https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/04/18/texas-battle-over-teaching-evolution-comes-down-to-one-word-evaluate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/04/18/texas-b...
  - quantified 5y ago
    Yes, the “I’m moral and will prevent your mistakes” crowd somehow is more determined to win. Teenagers subverting the grownups is part of the national culture.
- 5y ago

kibwen 5y ago

Abstinence-only sex education pushed by religious fundamentalists. Prophylactics are widely available (often free from any Planned Parenthood), but demonized. "The United States ranks first among developed nations in rates of both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In an effort to reduce these rates, the U.S. government has funded abstinence-only sex education programs for more than a decade. However, a public controversy remains over whether this investment has been successful and whether these programs should be continued. Using the most recent national data (2005) from all U.S. states with information on sex education laws or policies (N = 48), we show that increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/

xphilter 5y ago

Poor education below middle class (I’d argue even for middle class, compared to international peers). Poor access to medical care below middle class. And then poverty, generally.

Schiendelman 5y ago

Are they common? I think they’re high profile, but what makes you think they’re more common than any country where they’re more available?

micromacrofoot 5y ago

The US abortion rate is pretty comparable (actually lower) to other countries with abortion access. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_statistics?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_...

axlee 5y ago
Your link doesn't show statistics for any comparable country?
- belly_joe 5y ago
  The wiki article cites this link: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-... which does show many comparable countries, but it seems like much of the info is from ~10-15 years ago.
  - axlee 5y ago
    Thanks. Your link shows that the US is above all tracked western countries in terms of abortion rate, which goes against OP's point about the US having a lower abortion rate than comparable countries.
- beardyw 5y ago
  This site has more comprehensive stats, but a bit useless without background on legislation. Mexico for instance has only recently decriminalised it. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...

fnordsensei 5y ago

I just did a quick DuckDuckGo to find some stats, but according to the first page I found, the US is not even in the top ten (the top one being Russia according to the site). The US seems roughly on par with other developed countries. It might be that it seems more common, as it seems to be a more contentious issue in the US than among its peers. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...

refurb 5y ago
I mean the average is around 15 and the US is 21. That said, it probably has a lot to do with pregnancy rates. Singapore has a very low rate yet access is pretty wide open. Most of that a legacy due to fear of overpopulation (they had a “stop at 2” policy for quite and while and like China, are now panicking about low birth rates).
kibwen 5y ago
Looking at people willing to get abortions shows ordinary rates relative to other developed countries, demonstrating that demand for abortions is inelastic among those willing to consider the option. The problem is that the US also has disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy: "Despite considerable declines in recent decades, the U.S. adolescent pregnancy rate, at 57 per 1,000 in 2010, is the highest in the developed world outside the former Soviet Bloc. The next highest rate is in New Zealand (51 in 2010)." https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescent-pregnancy-and-its-outcomes-across-countries https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/adolescent-pregnancy-a...

jquery 5y ago

Common compared to what? What’s the right number of abortions and why?

Chazprime 5y ago

Schools in the US don’t like to educate students about - or offer access to - birth control.

gameswithgo 5y ago

They are not so common, but it is one of our top two political issues. People will vote based on these issues even if all other issues run counter to their beliefs. abortion and gun rights.

temp8964 5y ago

Just because the title used the word "overwhelmingly" doesn't mean it is common. It is still rare. "overwhelmingly" in this context only means percentage among those having abortions.

thatguy0900 5y ago

They are, you can even get them for free or very cheap if you're poor. Well maybe not in Texas, you can where I'm at in Ohio. I'm not really sure that abortions are really common, it's just a hot button issue. From a quick Google search it's 195 abortions per 1,000 live births in us in 2019 and 270 in france in 2018.

BobbyJo 5y ago

Impossible to answer without knowing what you mean by "so common." The rate is around 1-2% of pregnancies [0]. I wouldn't consider that very common. If everyone with a good reason (health risks, life circumstances) to get one did so, I'd honestly expect more. Furthermore, birth control is not 100%. You can do everything right and still get pregnant. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States#Trends_in_abortion_statistics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_U...

waserwill 5y ago

For the entire US, the rate is not very high, and has been decreasing over the last few decades; it's similar to rates in the UK and France. There's likely more variance, though, since some groups and individuals are much less likely to abort, whereas others are much more likely. The latter involves, partly: contraceptive perceptions, access, poverty, among others.

xoa 5y ago

>Being from outside of USA, can someone explain me why abortions are so common. They're... not though? Your entire premise doesn't seem to have any basis here, see ex. [0]. The US rate doesn't look dramatically different than anywhere else. It's almost identical to Sweden or Australia. Plenty of Eastern European and Asian countries are higher. The US doesn't even make the top 10. France and England are lower but not dramatically so. And a lot of the countries that claim it's low in official stats are clearly full of it, with abortions merely happening illicitly with no report. 0: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-...

prasadjoglekar 5y ago

Your question has an embedded assumption about commonality. TFA, and the underlying Planned Parenthood, don't actually cite raw #s, just % increases. Here's a Google search result for per-capita data: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-.... The US is not noticeably better or worse than other countries supplying data; certainly in the same ballpark as the UK, Canada and Sweden. The US is much larger than those countries in absolute population, so the raw # is larger.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

They aren't any more common than other countries where it is legal: It might not be more common than places where it is illegal, but it is harder to count in those places and they more commonly have to look at hospitalizations after unsafe abortions to guess numbers. Regular birth control measures are available. You might not be able to afford it, though, for example: If you'd rather have birth control pills, you need to be able to afford a visit to a doctor first and that doctor may require a pelvic exam even though it isn't necessary for it. Condoms are sold at most gas stations, pharmacies, and grocery stores but I'm not aware if they'll send you condoms for free. You don't have a right to sterilisation (even after 25), so a doctor can simply refuse (it isn't unheard of for a doctor to tell a woman no if she doesn't have children - even if it will improve her health - or require her to talk to her husband about it). You also have a situation with poor sex education. So while condoms are available, how to use them properly isn't as known. Instead of information, you generally get slut shamed and told you need to wait until marriage, and then the message is that birth control isn't an issue for you then. A lot of time was taken to tell us about diseases, too, but not necessarily that some are fairly easily treated or aren't as horrible as they made it seem.

igetspam 5y ago

They're not common but the right to have one is important and we're nuts about forcing our personal morals on strangers, which is why we talk about it so much. Some very loud, obnoxious, portion of the population believes religious freedom means you're free to believe in whatever version of Cheesus you want and anyone who thinks anything else is encroaching on their rights.

lucb1e 5y ago

Are they "so common"? Citation needed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#Epidemiol... Unintended pregnancies (UPs) per 1000 women ages 15–44 years old by year and region: - 1990-1994: 66 European average vs. 50 in North America - 2010-2014: 41 European average vs. 47 in North America Specific countries report numbers differently: - Britain 2013 "16% of British pregnancies are unplanned, 29% are ambivalent, and are 55% planned" - France 2008 "33% of pregnancies are unintended" - Sweden 2013 "12% of pregnancies were fairly or very unplanned" - USA "slightly less than half (45%) of U.S. pregnancies in 2011 were unintended". Of course, UPs are not the same as abortions. Many abortions are due to an UP (USA: "Over 92% of abortions are the result of unintended pregnancy"), but not all UPs result in abortions (USA: "In 2001, 44% of unintended pregnancies resulted in births, 42% resulted in induced abortion, and the rest in miscarriage."). Looking just at abortions, Estonia has the fourth-highest* rate with 33.3 whereas Belgium has the lowest at 7.3. Europe is all over the place (and it's not as if abortions are illegal or deemed immoral in Belgium, quite the opposite). USA is at 20.8. These figures are per 1000 women from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-... So are abortions "so common"? Dunno, it seems quite high when looking at a the area I'm from (max(NL/BE/DE)=10) but it's also not through the roof. * Most countries don't have a known value for abortions though, like most of Africa/Latam/Southeast Asia and all of South America, so take "fourth highest" with a huge grain of salt.

JaimeThompson 5y ago

In Texas teaching sex education is strongly discouraged while teaching abstinence only education in public schools is mandatory. Some in the Republican party want states to be able to ban birth control as well. [1] [1] https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2022/02/21/michigan-gop-birth-control-griswold-abortion-dobbs/6879282001/ https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/... EDIT: Link to PDF about sex education in Texas https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/Report_final_web.pdf https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/Report_final_web....

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>In Texas teaching sex education is strongly discouraged while teaching abstinence only education in public schools is mandatory. Holy shit, that's even more backwards than my poor backwater Eastern European country where the Orthodox church still has big influence. Teaching sex-ed to kids and giving them free condoms is becoming the norm. How is this possible in such a wealthy, educated and developed country? No alcohol before 21, no sex before 18, etc., American kids must be going nuts over there.
- sofixa 5y ago
  They forget religion has no place in public life, least of all education.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    This is interesting too https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/04/18/texas-battle-over-teaching-evolution-comes-down-to-one-word-evaluate/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/04/18/texas-b...
- quantified 5y ago
  Yes, the “I’m moral and will prevent your mistakes” crowd somehow is more determined to win. Teenagers subverting the grownups is part of the national culture.
5y ago