Abortion "statistics"?

[NI4NI]

Recently, I have seen it printed that 43 million abortions have been performed in this country since the mid 70's.
I always believed that there is a doctor/patient privlege. Am I wrong?
Are doctors or patients obligated to report any abortion performed? But if not, how can such "statistics" be known?

[valerief]

1. What's privacy? Is that something the Pilgrims used to have?

:sarcasm:

[ck4829]

2. I remember hearing 40 to 43 million since like forever.

For that to be true, that would mean 3000 fetuses would be aborted every day. For some reason, they never say that because that sounds too incredible to be true (Because it isn't true).

[NI4NI]

6. The reason I'm asking is

I did not want to refute a local LTTE claiming that number without first asking my questions here
about how such a number is compiled. I wanted my own LTTE to refute the claim with more than just replying, "what is their documented source", as I hardly think it is public record.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. using the 43,000,000, it comes out to 3570/day.

How many abortion clinics are there in the country? Any idea what the breakdown is state by state? I keep hearing of various "only three abortions providers left" stories which makes me think that a few people are really reaally busy

or somebody's exaggerating.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. No, that sounds about right, give or take a power of 2.

There are about 1.5 x 10^8 women in the US; there were slightly fewer than that in the 70s.

Suppose that the average woman has N abortions in her lifetime.

It has been - very roughly - half a lifetime since 1970, or slightly less.

So you would have expected about 1.5 x 10^8 x 0.5 x N abortions since then.

So about 70,000,000 times N, or slightly less.


So 43 million abortions is at least in the right ball park, I think. How accurate it is, I don't know.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Can you provide any evidence that N is 0.5 rather than 0.05?

Sounds like you arbitrarily decided on a number that coincidentally works out to the stated number of abortions -- but there is no basis for that number.

By plugging in 0.05 as N it comes up as 4.3 million instead of 43 million. Or how about 0.25, for 21.5 million?

Math without methodology means nothing.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. I don't need to prove my point,.

I was merely trying to point out that the figure of 43,000,000 could perfectly well be correct, inasmuch as that it's not absurd, not claiming that it actually is.


A brief search on the internet reveals the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_New_Zealand says that there are 21.3 abortions for each 1000 women aged 15-44 per year in America.

That's about 85 abortions per 1000 women per year, so N = 0.6 or thereabouts.


Or, one can work backwards from the initial 40,000,000ish figure, which I haven't seen seriously challenged, to calculate N, if you care enough. But that would require accepting that figure first, obviously. OTOH, it does appear that those statistics are reasonably uncontroversial.

[mzteris]

13. Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States

Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States
05/2006

INCIDENCE OF ABORTION
Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion.<1> Twenty-four percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.<2>

In 2002, 1.29 million abortions took place, down from 1.36 million in 1996. From 1973 through 2002, more than 42 million legal abortions occurred.<3>

Each year, two out of every 100 women aged 15–44 have an abortion; 48% of them have had at least one previous abortion.<4>

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html


***

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. Um, it may well be - certainly it isn't too far out.

In post 9, I calculated that the number of abortions performed in America since 1970 is about equal to 75,000,000 N, where N is the average number of abortions a woman has in her lifetime, give or take a lot (that's probably a slight overestimate).

The average person lives for about 25,000 days. There are about 150,000,000 women in America. So you'd expect about 6000 x N abortions per day.

And I'd be surprised if N is much lower than 0.5.

So I find that statistic fairly believable.

[mzteris]

3. here's a good source

for information: http://www.guttmacher.org/sections/abortion.php



As for privacy - well, the doctor can report he did "x" number of abortions without divulging any personal info.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. While the estimated US abortions is somewhere between 40 and 43

million, the worldwide figure of children who have died from hunger, lack of water, disease, environmental pollution and war is 373,541,000. More than 30,100 children die each day. Already this year, day number 40, over 12,134,000 people have died from starvation alone. Where, oh where, are all those 'pro-life' people? Why no march on DC?

Forgot link: http://www.starvation.net/

[idealistMO]

5. doctor/patient privlege.

I think that abortion clinics can (must??) provide numbers of abortions and information like that - and as long as no names or identifying information is given, then the doctor/patient privlege is kept intact..... otherwise how could any health statistics ever be utilized? .... like how many broken arms were there in 2006? Like how big is the hiv/AIDS problem in the US .... how many people were infected last year???

[necklace]

8. I Agree on Your Distinction...

I believe that there is a difference between providing numbers for statistical analysis and divulging patient information. I believe that disclosing the number of abortions performed would not be such a violation. However, to disclose the fact that a certain woman had this procedure because she was a victim of incest would be!

[bluevoter4life]

14. Pretty good estimate

That sounds about right. All the research I've done say between 40 and 45 million. That averages out to about 1.2 million a year, or about 25,000 per state.