Unwanted Pregnancies Rise for Poor Women in U.S.

[Black Dog]

Poor women in America are increasingly likely to have unwanted pregnancies, whereas relatively affluent women are succeeding more and more in getting pregnant only when they want to, according to a study analyzing federal statistics.

Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.

The abortion rate also rose among poor women while declining among the more affluent.

"Clearly, something is changing, and it doesn't bode well in terms of unplanned pregnancies and abortions for poor women, in particular," said Heather Boonstra, one of the authors of the report.

Asked what was driving the trends, the authors noted that some state and federal reproductive health programs have been cut or made more restrictive in recent years. State and federal programs have increasingly focused on abstinence rather than contraception, and some analysts have argued that the shift is leading to less use of contraceptives and more unintended pregnancies.

You mean just telling people to "just say no" to sex doesn't work? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Thank godness so-con dogma is immue to facts.

Many social conservatives say, however, that contraceptives have limitations and that the only way a woman can ensure she will not have an unintended pregnancy is to refrain from sexual intercourse until she is ready to have a child.

Leslee Unruh, president and founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a South Dakota-based nonprofit that seeks to educate about abstinence programs, said the growing number of unintended pregnancies among poorer women shows that traditional sex education programs are failing.

"Programs for poor women are often so condescending, even degrading," she said. "They teach how to put on a condom rather than how to take control of their lives."

And I'm sure the trend has nothing to do with the cuts to non-abstinence oriented programs and the deemphasis on birth control (not to mention economic factors that would put costly birth control options out of reach of the non-affluent).

As for comprehensive sex ed being "degrading", for some reason affluent women don't seem to find that to be a problem.

The authors said the growing disparities between richer and poorer women appeared to be the result of greater contraceptive use by the more affluent. The health statistics center, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported in 2004 that after decades of increasing contraceptive use, the trend stalled in the late 1990s and began to decline after that. The decline occurred almost entirely in poorer women.

You mean the decline in contraceptive use and corresponding increase in pregnancies among the poor started around 2000? I wonder what was significant about taht year? Hmmm... I wonder.....

Thank goodness for so-con policies that restrict abortion are there to make sure poor women pay the price for being so irresponsible as to not afford birth control.

The report, released yesterday, found that the overall abortion rate has declined steadily for years and that a higher percentage of women with unintended pregnancies are carrying them to birth. It also found that women who have abortions are doing so earlier in their pregnancies -- when it is safer for the woman -- than in the past.

[Guest Warwick Green]

Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.

I expect that many of these women live in an environment where they have sex whenever their partner wants it and if he doesn't want to get rubberred up he doesn't and she doesn't have enough money for a pill or an IUD.

[August1991]

Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.

IOW, the data reflects changes when Clinton was president, not Bush Jnr. While Clinton changed the US welfare system, he promoted various liberal-style sex education programmes. (Excuse the unintended joke.)

I think the following quote is telling:

The health statistics center, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported in 2004 that after decades of increasing contraceptive use, the trend stalled in the late 1990s and began to decline after that. The decline occurred almost entirely in poorer women.

...

Black and Hispanic women were considerably more likely to become pregnant than white women, and black women had by far the highest percentage of unintended pregnancies and abortions.

I'll bet that something is happening among young black women.

In short, this report has political spin, and the Washington Post article too.

[geoffrey]

Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.

I expect that many of these women live in an environment where they have sex whenever their partner wants it and if he doesn't want to get rubberred up he doesn't and she doesn't have enough money for a pill or an IUD.

Most States offer contraceptives free of charge for low-income or no-income people.

These are people that just don't care, and really don't deserve sympathy.

[RB]

I think "white" don't have children is the result of legalisation of abortion the same reason why crimes are also reduced.

If the blacks can also access some wealth to cope with abortion perphaps you can see some sophisticated filtered system

[August1991]

I think "white" don't have children is the result of legalisation of abortion the same reason why crimes are also reduced.

I was uncomfortable with that "abortion means lower crime stats" argument and now I have evidence. If you have the stomach for him, let me quote Mark Steyn at length. (I haven't seen Ponnuru's book but now I'm intrigued.)

Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, is an apparently permanent presence on the Maclean's bestseller list mainly because of one central proposition: according to the authors, the legalization of abortion in the seventies accounted for up to half of the reduction in U.S. crime in the nineties. If you accept one of the central locutions of the abortion lobby -- that every child should be "wanted" -- this feels true: to quote the bumper sticker the columnist Nicholas von Hoffman liked to drive around with a few years back, "The fetus you save will grow up to mug you!"

And that's correct in a very basic way: almost all crime is committed by young men. If you were to abort all babies, there would be no one to hold up the convenience store in 20 years' time. On the other hand, there would also be no one to man the convenience store. The devil is in the details of trying to find the balance between those two points.

The Freakonomics theory rang false to me. For one thing, the abortion era has seen a huge rise in crime in Britain, Scandinavia and most other Western jurisdictions. If termination of the "unwanted" pre-emptively clears the punks and hoods from our streets, why wouldn't London and Stockholm and, indeed, Toronto have also seen an abortion dividend?

The pro-abortion U.S. media were notably reluctant to question Levitt and Dubner's findings. A "woman's right to choose" is not as popular as once it was, and the abortion crowd seemed happy to take "society's right to choose" as a viable fallback option, notwithstanding the whiff of old-time eugenics about the argument. But in his splendidly lucid new book The Party Of Death, Ramesh Ponnuru conclusively demolishes the Freakonomics case. While its key evidence turns out to be based on a programming error, its plausibility in the marketplace derives from a more casual assumption -- that the 45 million unborn children aborted since 1973 would, absent Roe vs. Wade, all have been born.

I think "white" don't have children is the result of legalisation of abortion the same reason why crimes are also reduced.

If the blacks can also access some wealth to cope with abortion perphaps you can see some sophisticated filtered system.

RB, I've always admired your free mind and I was heartened to see you respond in this thread.

I don't know if it's "access to wealth to cope" that is the key factor. In relative terms, young black American women are rich. Something else explains this, and I have a sense that young black American women feel positive about the future and their way to express this is to have children. But maybe I'm wrong. [incidentrally, the US birth rate collapsed in the 1930s.]

[Guest Warwick Green]

Most States offer contraceptives free of charge for low-income or no-income people.

These are people that just don't care, and really don't deserve sympathy.

Ay, there's the rub. How many bother to use them, even if free?

[PocketRocket]

I expect that many of these women live in an environment where they have sex whenever their partner wants it and if he doesn't want to get rubberred up he doesn't and she doesn't have enough money for a pill or an IUD.

WG: This explanation would hold water if it was an ongoing trend. But what is pointed out is a dramatic increase since 2000.

I don't that the "environment" you describe would be changing so radically in such a short period, at least not enough to explain such a significant rise in the stats.

Most States offer contraceptives free of charge for low-income or no-income people.

Ay, there's the rub. How many bother to use them, even if free?

This is a far more likely explanation.

[RB]

I don't know if it's "access to wealth to cope" that is the key factor. In relative terms, young black American women are rich. Something else explains this, and I have a sense that young black American women feel positive about the future and their way to express this is to have children. But maybe I'm wrong. [incidentrally, the US birth rate collapsed in the 1930s.]

Women were always punished for being sexually active.

I feel as if sex is treated as a commodity that only the rich can afford, means also they are not punished as in unwanted pregnancies, they don't feel morally impugned and are somehow justified in their participation in sex. Wealth is the key and unless women can access the same they have an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Look this is no propaganda now, if I were to look at the relations again between the male and female. The female it seems come very "cheap" because of the unequal bargaining positions (the food, cloth, shelter bit that males provide) also termed control, domination and access.

Following though with this line of thinking women are kept poor and will do anything including this so called promiscuous behavior to get their basic necessities. Imagine if we have a whole lot of parade of cheap pussies around, the market becomes so saturated with women, they finally just exist and now they will do just about anything to trade. The result, the poorest of women bears the burden.

In a sysnopsis, poor women really survive on cheap, or free sex and cannot invalidate their unwanted pregnancy that’s what this thread is about.

Secondly, noticeably, there is a rise in deviant sexual behavior, a deviation from man-woman sex. We are cutting back on spending for control for these poor people and operating a society as a free marketer. What I mean is, because of the lack of support to women and poor black women this society is churning out gays, lesbians and masturbation in the plenty.

I suppose I will get the encouragement of society if I call for such trendy habits as abstinence from a healthy heterosexual relations and a closet revelations.

I am not sure that coming out of the closet is built in genes but had a direct correlation in the change in government and their policies.

[Leafless]

Lack of diversities, poverity, coupled with lack of education is the main cause of unwanted pregnancies.

Just look around at the poorer countries in the world and it's the same story all over...unwanted pregnancies.

When there is nothing to do but have sex, you know what the predicable outcome will be.