Hispanic Women are Less Likely to Consider Abortion

ABSTRACT

The Issues4Life Foundation, for example, is a faith-based organization that targets and works with African-American leaders toward achieving the goal of "zero African-American lives lost to abortion or biotechnology." In April, Issues4Life wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus to denounce Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its "racist and eugenic goals." The group blamed PPFA and abortion providers in general for the high abortion rate in the African-American community—deeming the situation the "Da[r]fur of America"—and called on Congress to withdraw federal family planning funds from all PPFA affiliates.

INTRODUCTION

This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.

These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.

Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all. These higher unintended pregnancy rates reflect the particular difficulties that many women in minority communities face in accessing high-quality contraceptive services and in using their chosen method of birth control consistently and effectively over long periods of time. Moreover, these realities must be seen in a larger context in which significant racial and ethnic disparities persist for a wide range of health outcomes, from diabetes to heart disease to breast and cervical cancer to sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV.

WHO GETS ABORTIONS?

Women with unintended pregnancies are those most likely to get abortions. According to the Guttmacher report, 47 percent of unintended pregnancies are aborted. Teenagers, unmarried women, black and Hispanic women, and those with low incomes are more likely than the population as a whole to have unintended pregnancies.

The report shows that non-Hispanic white women get about 40 percent of all U.S. abortions, black women 32 percent and Hispanic women, who can be of any race, 20 percent. Women of other races account for the other 8 percent. Black and Hispanic women have higher rates of abortion than non-Hispanic whites, the report states.

Other facts about U.S. abortions from the Guttmacher report:

Six in 10 women who had abortions in 2002 were mothers. Despite the common belief, women who have abortions ...