The rates of pregnancy and abortion among young women — especially Black women — have been political fodder for many years and trotted out during election cycles as pro-choice and anti-choice activists respectively fight for more sex education and abstinence warnings.
Though politicians continue to try to legislate a woman’s uterus, a report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that both pregnancy and abortion statistics for women in their ’20s are at a much lower rate than they were in the ’90s — proving that women are doing an excellent job making decisions about their personal reproductive health all on their own.
The report from the National Center for Health Statistics stated that in 2008, the pregnancy rate for the 20 to 24 age group was 163 per 1,000 women. By comparison, in 1990 that demographic had a pregnancy rate of 198.5 per 1,000, which was nearly 18 percent higher than in 2008.
Pregnancy rates for women between the ages of 25 and 29 fell a more modest 6 percent during the same time period, to 167.9 per 1,000, according to statistics in the report.
The abortion rate also declined among women in their early 20s, to 38.4 per 1,000 women in 2008 from 56.7 per 1,000 in 1990, the report said. That represented a drop of 32 percent.
Again, the drop was more modest for women in their late 20s, as their abortion rate fell to 28.6 per 1,000 in 2008, from 33.9 per 1,000 in 1990, the report said.
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