Things to ask when looking at statistics:
First, what is the source of the statistics? How were they reported, was it based on reports from medical providers or a self-survey? If a self-survey, how large was the sample and is it representative of the population as a whole? Is the source likely to be biased in some way? Is it measuring only a specific group (ie women in America)?
It sounds like the following CDC report on statistics gathered in the US in 2003 may have been the basis for some of those statistics
cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/ss/ss5511.pdf
Folks have already addressed the misreading, but I do want to point out that " I didn’t know the percentage was that big…that almost makes it 1 out of every 2 women we see who are pregnant will have one?" implies that most abortions occur after the woman is visibly pregnant, ie around 5 months or 20 weeks gestation. The report instead says:
“In 2003, for women from areas where weeks of gestation at
the time of abortion were adequately reported (44 reporting
areas), 59% of reported legal induced abortions were known
to have been obtained at <8 weeks’ gestation and 87% at <13
weeks (Table 6). Overall (42 reporting areas), 26% of abortions
were known to have been obtained at <6 weeks’ gestation,
18% at 7 weeks, and 15% at 8 weeks (Table 7). Few
reported abortions occurred after 15 weeks’ gestation: 4.1%
at 16–20 weeks and 1.4% at >21 weeks.”
The abortion rate in the US at the time was listed as 16/1000 or 1.6 out of a hundred (and that .4 is a real difference, it represents 4 fewer women out of every thousand).
It actually shows that the abortion rate has been declining since 1992.
'" Interpretation: During 1990–1997, the number of legal induced abortions gradually declined. When the same 47
reporting areas are compared, the number of abortions decreased during 1996–2001, then slightly increased in 2002
and again decreased in 2003. In 2000 and 2001, even with one additional reporting state, the number of abortions
declined slightly, with a minimal increase in 2002 and a further decrease in 2003. In 2001 and 2002, as in the previous
years, deaths related to legal induced abortions occurred rarely."
As to the repeat rate:
“For women who obtained an abortion and whose number
of previous abortions were adequately reported (40 reporting
areas), 54% were reported to have obtained an abortion for
the first time, and 19% were reported to have had at least two
previous abortions (Table 13).” Note that Table 13 is on p. 28 of the report. It lists data from 39 states plus New York City and breaks down as follows:
Of American women in the reporting areas who had an abortion in 2003 for whom the data on previous abortions was available:
53.9% had not had a previous abortion
25.1% had had one previous abortion
10.9% had had two previous abortions
7.6% had had three or more previous abortions
2.4% were listed as unknown
Note that the not all of the reporting areas turned in adequate information to determine whether the women obtaining abortions had or had not had previous ones.
same survey
“More than one in five U.S. pregnancies have ended in abortion,
according to a national sample survey conducted by AGI
during 2001–2002 among all known U.S. abortion providers
(64).”
The footnote of the source is listed as “64. Finer LB, Henshaw SK. Abortion incidence and services in the United
States in 2000. Perspect Sex Reprod Health 2003;35:6–15.”
The report does not seem to address the rate of unintended pregnancy.
This quote: “About half of American women have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and at current rates more than
one-third will have had an abortion by age 45”
looks like it might have come from the following:
guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3002498.html
“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.”
So it looks like the projection of a third having an abortion by age 45 is based on abortion rates as of 1994. If we go back to the CDC report, it says:
“Overall, the annual number of legal induced abortions in
the United States increased gradually from 1973 to 1990 (peak
point) and then generally declined thereafter (Figure 1).”
So it is possible that the likelihood is not quite as high currently as the 1994 data suggest, especially if both the unintended pregnancy and the abortion rate are dropping.
