Almea sends this post for a serious journal article on unintended pregnancy rates and abortion rates in response to my Salon abortion post. The summary of the results is:

Excluding miscarriages, 49% of the pregnancies concluding in 1994 were unintended; 54% of these ended in abortion. Forty-eight percent of women aged 15­-44 in 1994 had had at least one unplanned pregnancy sometime in their lives; 28% had had one or more unplanned births, 30% had had one or more abortions and 11% had had both. At 1994 rates, women can expect to have 1.42 unintended pregnancies by the time they are 45, and at 1992 rates, 43% of women will have had an abortion. Between 1987 and 1994, the unintended pregnancy rate declined by 16%, from 54 to 45 per 1,000 women of reproductive age. The proportion of unplanned pregnancies that ended in abortion increased among women aged 20 and older, but decreased among teenagers, who are now more likely than older women to continue their unplanned pregnancies. The unintended pregnancy rate was highest among women who were aged 18­-24, unmarried, low-income, black or Hispanic.

This raises some interesting questions. One of which is, how much of this is due to needing better birth control and how much is due to people just not having brith control. My Evolutionary Biology TF said that "in principle the problem of contraception is solved" you just take some sperm freeze it and sterilize. He speculated whether sex and procreation may some day be completely seperated.

But on the question at hand, whether Salon's claim that "roughly half the women in the U.S. will undergo an abortion in their lifetime" is accurate, I must say that this article points to the answer "No." In the words of the article, "at 1992 rates, 43% of women will have had an abortion" which not only is substantially less than half, but according to the summary the rate of unintended pregnancies is decreasing, and one would expect this trend to likely continue. Thus even 43% is too high a number.

The long and short of this is, I wish people would give conservative estimates when they're trying to make points. By citing "roughly half" I was completely distracted from the author's point and instead started thinking that the author was lying. On the other hand, a number like 35%, which is more plausible and more accurate, would still have made the point that this is not a fringe procedure and is remarkably common despite the stigma.

This reminds me of the "1/4 women have been victims of rape or attempted rape before graduation" statistic, which is a huge overestimate from a somewhat problematic study which is 25 years old! This screems to me "we went out and found the most inflammatory fact avaliable, not the most accurate" and is annoying and distracts from the important point that far too many women have been victims of rape or attempted rape.