Today the invaluable Chiaroscuro Foundation has a new map out illustrating New York abortion rates by zip code over a ten year period. Greg Pfundstein explains the chilling data over at NRO:
New York is one of the states with the most complete abortion license in the nation. Beyond the fact that in New York only a licensed physician can (legally) perform an abortion, and that there is a 24-week gestational age limit, a woman can procure an abortion in New York for any reason with no interference. New York City’s abortion regime is America’s abortion regime: What is emanating from the penumbras of the Constitution is the fact that in parts of Jamaica, Queens, over the last ten years, six out of every ten women with a viable pregnancy procured an abortion.
The city’s political leaders work (often helpfully) in the service of the real-estate class while trying to maintain their liberal credentials through unwavering support of sexual liberationism. This combination has been particularly devastating for the city’s African-American neighborhoods, where 60 percent of all pregnancies end in an abortion. With a political elite unwilling to question pro-abortion orthodoxies, the only factor likely to push down abortion rates is, perhaps, gentrification. In lieu of any other solution, certain neighborhoods will be spared the scourge of abortion only when they are swept away by rising rents.
Over time, the steady march of gentrification will be the big story told by abortion maps like Chiaroscuro’s. It is a story of political and moral failure.
March 20th, 2012 | 12:52 pm
I am not sure I understand the point here. Neighborhoods don’t have abortions. Individual women do. Neighborhoods don’t suffer “the scourge of abortion.” If neighborhoods with high concentrations of black and hispanic women—the two groups that have very high abortion rates—were evacuated and the residents dispersed evenly all over the city, the map might look less frightful, but there would still be the same number of abortions.
The fact is that the high abortion rate in New York City is not the result of wickedness in New Yorkers. It is due to the fact that New York City has a high concentration of the types of people who have abortions (blacks, hispanics, the poor). Black women have an abortion rate almost five times higher than that of white women. Exactly why that is the case is a very good question. But given that fact, it is not surprising at all that neighborhoods with high black populations have high abortion rates.
Abortion is not a New York City issue. Those who live in affluent areas with few blacks and hispanics have no right to pat themselves on the back for their relatively low abortion rates.
One of the things we do know is that the higher the rate of unintended pregnancy, the higher the abortion rate. Black and hispanic women have significantly more unintended pregnancies than white women. Why, I don’t pretend to understand. But it is very clear that the best way to lower the abortion rate is to lower the rate of unintended pregnancies.
March 20th, 2012 | 2:26 pm
Chiaroscuro is about abortion in New York City. Whether its local work deserves national publicity is for the editors of national publications to decide, in the first instance.
If I remember correctly, the book Greg mentions, “Promises I Can Keep,” suggests completely unintended pregnancy is not the problem. By “completely unintended” I mean the classic stories of failed contraception, or an unplanned one-night-stand, or sexual assault or coercion. The problem is women half-intending pregnancies, or intending to get pregnant and changing their minds. When you don’t really plan to graduate high school or escape public assistance, a baby who significantly reduces your chances of fulfilling those half-plans is not something to be prevented as carefully as when you do have those plans. It’s been a few years since I read the book, but I seem to recall several, “I thought he’d stick around and shape up if I told him I was pregnant, but he just got angry and took off” narratives as well.
March 20th, 2012 | 3:29 pm
“Neighborhoods don’t have abortions. Individual women do. Neighborhoods don’t suffer “the scourge of abortion.”
Not sure I follow the logic here. Neighborhoods don’t commit violent crimes, individual criminals do. Neighborhoods aren’t the victims of assault, individuals are. Does it therefore follow that neighborhoods don’t suffer “the scourge of crime”?
If it is to be believed that abortions, like almost every other significant thing in the world, affect more than the particular individual involved, how could it not be that abortions affect neighborhoods? If abortions represent and possibly even reinforce a negative attitude toward childbearing and children, how could it not be bad for the neighborhood if abortion reaches a certain critical mass?
March 20th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
pentamom,
People who move from low-crime to high-crime neighborhoods increase their odds of becoming crime victims. Would you really want to argue that a woman moving from a zip code area with a low abortion rate to a zip code area with a high abortion rate increases the odds that she will have an abortion? If she moves from an area where there is a 25% abortion rate to one where there is a 50% abortion rate, is she then twice as likely to have an abortion?
Do you really think that gentrification of a neighborhood is a good thing to the extent that it lowers the neighborhood’s abortion rate? If the poor and the minorities get pushed out of the neighborhood, they will move somewhere else, and it’s difficult to imagine (unless their circumstances improve dramatically), that the abortion rate for the people will improve. Gentrification is not generally to the benefit of the people living in a New York neighborhood before the gentrification process begins.
March 20th, 2012 | 10:28 pm
“Would you really want to argue that a woman moving from a zip code area with a low abortion rate to a zip code area with a high abortion rate increases the odds that she will have an abortion?”
No, I would not. I was merely making the point that the argument “abortions happen to individuals, therefore they do not happen to neighborhoods” is a non sequitur.
March 21st, 2012 | 9:23 am
I was merely making the point that the argument “abortions happen to individuals, therefore they do not happen to neighborhoods” is a non sequitur.
pentamom,
You put in quotation marks something I never said. I did not say “abortions happen to individuals, therefore they do not happen to neighborhoods.” I said, “Neighborhoods don’t have abortions. Individual women do.” Perhaps I should make it a little more precise and say that neighborhoods don’t procure abortions. Individual women procure them. I don’t think it makes sense to say “abortions happen to individuals.” Remember the objection a few weeks ago to women saying they “found themselves” pregnant? I think the arguments against saying that go double for abortion. Abortions don’t “happen to” women. Women procure abortions. I would particularly criticize this statement from the post: “With a political elite unwilling to question pro-abortion orthodoxies, the only factor likely to push down abortion rates is, perhaps, gentrification.” It is not that living within a particular zip code influences women to have, or not to have, abortions. The overall abortion rate will not change because a zip code with a heavily minority population becomes a largely affluent, white neighborhood. If women who are statistically likely to have abortions move out of a particular zip code, they will move into another zip code. Gentrification doesn’t lower abortions. It it redistributes people likely to have abortions so that rates in one zip code go down but go up in other zip codes.
March 21st, 2012 | 4:19 pm
Would her neighborhood not serve as an index such that a woman moving there is indeed likely or not likely to consider an abortion? In the improbable event that a woman move from the Upper East Side to Bed-Sty, the pattern would not hold, of course. But women moving to Bed-Sty are likely coming from similar neighborhoods, so the colors of the map make for a reasonable guess.
March 21st, 2012 | 8:28 pm
David, isn’t that whole response just begging the question?
Aren’t you just assuming that the local subcultural environment *is not* a contributing factor to the likelihood of a given woman having an abortion, rather than demonstrating it, or disproving the opposite?
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