Statement by Greg Pfundstein of the Chiaroscuro Foundation:
In today’s State of the State address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to pass the Reproductive Health Act, a controversial piece of legislation designed to further liberalize abortion law in New York State. New York’s abortion regime is among the most liberal on Planet Earth already. The notion that women need more access to abortion in New York is simply preposterous.
“According to data publicized by the Chiaroscuro Foundation beginning in 2011, the rate of abortion in New York City is nearly twice the national average, with 40% of pregnancies ending in abortion in the City. In some zip codes, the abortion ratio approaches 60%.
“A 2011 poll conducted for the Chiaroscuro Foundation by McLaughlin and Associates found that two-thirds of New Yorkers (64%)-including 57% of pro-choice women- think the abortion rate in New York City is too high. The poll also found that strong majorities of New Yorkers-like strong majorities of Americans-support sensible restrictions on abortion: 69% of New Yorkers would support a law requiring informed consent; 59% support requiring parental consent for minors; 51% even support a 24 hour waiting period before an abortion. “New Yorkers support sensible restrictions to bring down New York City’s unconscionably high rate of abortion, and Governor Cuomo promises the exact opposite in the Reproductive Health Act. New York certainly needs abortion legislation, but the RHA is not it.”
New York City abortion data, along with the 2011 poll, are available at NYC41percent.com.
January 10th, 2013 | 11:44 am
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=7883827
“Specifically non-Hispanic Blacks have a 59.8% abortion rate.”
January 10th, 2013 | 1:26 pm
Abortion is a “Hate Crime” against the most vulnerable people in our society–the unborn baby. So now, the governor is going to double down on the babies.
January 10th, 2013 | 1:45 pm
In what manner does the Reproductive Health Act “further liberalize abortion law in New York State”? Seems like a link would be useful there.
January 10th, 2013 | 2:24 pm
. . . . two-thirds of New Yorkers (64%)-including 57% of pro-choice women- think the abortion rate in New York City is too high.
Of course it is too high, although I wonder what figure those surveyed would consider too low or just right. But the reason the abortion rate in New York City is so high is that the city has a high concentration of the kind of women (black, Hispanic, poor, single) who have abortions. New York even has a significantly percentage of women than the country as a whole (and also of never-married women). For the entire country, there are 96.7 males for every 100 females. In New York City it is 93.8 males for every female. When adjusted for those factors, the abortion rate for the city is just about the same as the rate for the country as a whole.
January 10th, 2013 | 3:06 pm
How many of those abortions are for women traveling to New York from places with more restrictive laws?
January 10th, 2013 | 3:56 pm
David, your argument is nonsense. The abortion rate cited by the Chiaroscuro Foundation is the ratio of abortions to pregnancies, not abortions to women or abortions to total population.
The Chiaroscuro Foundation (see the NYC41percent link above) states that the abortion rate in New York City was 40% in 2010 while the national rate was 23%. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, in 2008 the overall national abortion rate (induced abortions to total pregnancies) was 18.4%. For non-Hispanic blacks the rate was 35.6%; for Hispanics, 17.3%; for all 15-19 year olds, 25.5%. All these figures are FAR below the equivalent rates for New York City.
See Table 3 for the CDC data.
January 10th, 2013 | 4:15 pm
An methodological addendum to my last post. The Chiaroscuro Foundation defines the “abortion rate” as the ratio of induced abortions to “pregnancies ending in live birth or abortion”. This differs from the CDC data which I cite above, from which I defined the abortion rate as the ratio of induced abortions to total pregnancies (which also includes the category “fetal losses”).
Making the definitions consistent, CDC data shows that the national abortion rate in 2008 per the Chiaroscuro Foundation’s definition was 22.2% for all women; 15.2% for non-Hispanic white women; 42.1% for black women; 20.4% for Hispanic women.
The comparable 2008 rates for New York City were 41.2% for all women; 21.4% for non-Hispanic white women; 60.0% for non-Hispanic black women; 41.7% for Hispanic women.
January 10th, 2013 | 4:24 pm
Karen, the data collected by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene records the residence of each woman. The numbers cited by The Chiaroscuro Foundation are only for women with a New York City residence.
In 2010, the New York City abortion rate (per the Chiaroscuro Foundation definition discussed above) was 40.0% for residents and 40.1% for non-residents.
See Table PO13.
January 10th, 2013 | 5:04 pm
Mr Nickol, I think the problem with the numbers you use is that even with the adjustments, most people in the country do not have that NYC mentality
January 10th, 2013 | 5:09 pm
David, your argument is nonsense.
Darel,
I don’t understand your point. Using your figure of 42.1% for the national abortion rate for black women, if all the women in New York were black, then it could actually be said that New York’s 41.2% abortion rate, adjusting for race, was slightly below the national average. Once again, I am saying that the reason for New York’s high abortion rate is that New York has the type of population in which women have more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.
In order to fairly compare New York City to the country at large, you have to take into consideration the large number of poor people, the large number of single women, the large number of blacks and Hispanics, and so on. It is not an accurate picture to go just by race or ethnicity. According to your figures, the rate for blacks nationally is 42.1% for black women and the New York rate is 60.0%. That is a big difference, but to do a true comparison to the rest of the country, you need to take into account the ratio in New York of married to unmarred black women, and the ratio of poor to non-poor. Age may well be a factor, too.
You would expect a population that had large numbers of poor, black and Hispanic, single women to have a larger abortion rate than than a population that was predominantly white, predominantly married, and predominantly affluent. As your numbers show, the abortion rate among white women in New York is slightly lower than the abortion rate for white women nationally. Does this mean that white women in New York are more virtuous than white women in the rest of the country, and that black and Hispanic women in New York are less virtuous than those elsewhere? I certainly doubt it. It almost certainly is the case that white women in New York are more affluent than white women in the rest of the country, and perhaps more likely to be…
January 10th, 2013 | 7:35 pm
Wait, I thought the Democratic Party was the champion of the downtrodden, the vulnerable, the ‘little man’, those who cannot defend themselves against the powerful….
Whatever.
January 10th, 2013 | 8:10 pm
David Nickol, is the fact that the abortion rate is high because people there experience the things that make people want to have abortions, suppose to mean something? To mitigate the point somehow? To make it less of a valuable statistic?
I’m sure that Chicago has a high murder rate because there are a lot of people there who are murderers, as well. Is that a meaningful statement?
January 10th, 2013 | 8:11 pm
BTW, I share Ray Ingles’ question. What actually is this proposed law?
January 10th, 2013 | 10:43 pm
pentamom,
I am basically discussing demographics. To focus on New York City’s abortion rate alone without discussing the demographics of New York City gives a very incomplete picture. Some people would like to blame the city’s high abortion rate on liberal politics, and no doubt that plays some part. But I would contend it is largely explained by demographics. Certainly the 41% figure is shocking. Certainly more must be done. But if you want to understand why the rate is so high, the answer is only partly that New York has liberal abortion laws. Demographics plays a much larger role.
January 10th, 2013 | 11:40 pm
Ray, according to NYS NOW it would eliminate all traces of abortion from the penal code. It would expand access to late term abortions from when the mothers’ life at risk to the much more liberal definition of the mother’s or child’s health. It would circumvent fetal homicide laws, parental consent orders and other restrictions. It would also claim a right to contraception and reduce the amount of medical training, licensure and oversight over those whom perform abortions.
It’s bad enough that New York redirects $10 million per year from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (a program that provides temporary food, transportation and shelter) to family planning (read: family destroying). Now the state wants to put women in the hands of those personnel no more qualified than back-alley abortionists.
January 11th, 2013 | 10:48 am
David, it seems that you are arguing that poverty and familial breakdown in New York are something like geography — we should expect the abortion rate there to be high, just like we expected flooding when a superstorm passed by. But the things that drive men and women to promiscuously create and then destroy their own children are not built-in factors, but problems.
Regardless of the demographic predictability of astronomical abortion rates in New York City, it is still a shame, a scandal and, yes, worth writing about. And it is also a legitimate point against Cuomo’s odd working assumption that abortion is too hard to obtain in New York State. Regardless of how abortion-prone a population is, you can’t get rates that high if there are significant barriers to it.
Only because you eisegetically discover blame being applied to liberal politics do the demographics matter in the sense you wish to bring them into the discussion. (Of course they matter as a means of attempting to address the problem, but they don’t matter in that “but, wait!” sense you’re introducing them.) But I don’t see anything in either the Chiaroscuro piece or the comments here to imply that.
So again, point out that the abortion rate is high in New York because there’s an abortion-prone population is tantamount to pointing out that before we take another step, we all need to realize that the murder rate in Chicago is high because a lot of people there are murder-prone. It’s inarguable, but it’s a vacuous point.
January 11th, 2013 | 5:43 pm
pentamom,
If someone wanted an explanation of why there are so many people in New York City who are bilingual, do you think an adequate explanation would be that New Yorkers are “bilingual prone”?
Giving a demographic analysis of New York’s high abortion rate is far more explanatory than saying a lot of New Yorkers are “abortion prone.” If group X has a consistently high abortion rate nationwide, and group X has a high abortion rate in New York City, it’s not something about New York City that causes that group to have a high abortion rate. That does not mean New York should not try to do something about it, but if you expect New York politicians to try to put all kinds of roadblocks in the way of women seeking abortions, that is unrealistic. New York is not Arizona.
And it is also a legitimate point against Cuomo’s odd working assumption that abortion is too hard to obtain in New York State.
If you read the news coverage you will find that this law is being considered not because Cuomo thinks “abortion is too hard to obtain” in New York right now. It has safeguards to protect existing abortion rights in the event that Roe v Wade is ever overturned. So you have attributed something to Cuomo that is not true.
Did you know, by the way, that Delaware has the highest abortion rate of any state in the country? It is higher even than New York (State). How often do you hear that?
January 11th, 2013 | 11:58 pm
One abortion is “too high.” And Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the son of the original personally-opposed-but-won’t-obstruct Catholic governor. The Archbishop of New York should not be at all suprised. This city is the culture of death capital of America. I lived there in the 80s and 90s and everyone knew someone who died. But now apparently there was no AIDS epidemic. Didn’t happen. No one dies of AIDS in the obituary columns of the NY Times. There is no promiscuity — everybody is “committed.” It’s Tom Hanks fantasy gay camp every day all day. When you start thinking something connected to ending life is too high then you are on the road to thinking it is an intrinsic evil. Or should be. And abortion is wrong every time. Under Fr. Neuhaus this was the editorial position of the magazine. Why is this discussion taking place here? How in all decency can any of the above commenters come to this publication and argue for abortion? It’s like coming to Mass and getting up and screaming “you are all wrong and I am going to come here every Sunday and scream that you are all wrong until I die.” Why do you have such disrespect for us. For the Church’s teachings, for God Himself. This goes beyond blog trolling. But the contempt is not only for us but for the unborn.
And demographics dictating morality is the Confederacy’s argument. Then again this president should not be compared to Lincoln but to the other president of the 1860s.
January 12th, 2013 | 11:58 am
Why is this discussion taking place here? How in all decency can any of the above commenters come to this publication and argue for abortion?
Graham Combs,
I don’t see any arguments for abortion in this thread. Trying to explain why the abortion rate in New York City is so high is not arguing for abortion.
It’s like coming to Mass and getting up and screaming . . .
Writing a comment on a First Things blog, even a comment disagreeing with the First Things point of view, is not like screaming at Mass. There is a comment policy, and comments are welcomed.
And demographics dictating morality is the Confederacy’s argument.
No one has argued demographics dictates morality. Knowing the demographics of New York City gives some insight into the high abortion rate. It says nothing about the morality of abortion.
No one dies of AIDS in the obituary columns of the NY Times.
Note the following:
January 13th, 2013 | 6:04 pm
“If someone wanted an explanation of why there are so many people in New York City who are bilingual, do you think an adequate explanation would be that New Yorkers are “bilingual prone”? ”
The whole point is that until you came along, the “explanation for why” was not at issue, except in your assumptions about what other people were thinking. It doesn’t matter why the abortion rate is high, unless you’re in a discussion about how to reduce it. But we weren’t in a discussion about how to reduce it — we were in a discussion about how apparently the governor thinks it’s not high enough.
And actually, yes, if someone popped up and informed everybody that the reason that the rate of bilingual people was high was that there were a high number of people whose first language was not English (which might be stated in short-hand as “bilingual-prone,”) I would equally consider that a non-contributor to the discussion, except perhaps in the mind of the person who wrote it, who is trying to overthrow some assumption that he believes that must be defeated, that no one has shown any evidence of holding.
January 13th, 2013 | 6:09 pm
“Did you know, by the way, that Delaware has the highest abortion rate of any state in the country? It is higher even than New York (State). How often do you hear that?”
No, I didn’t, and it’s equally bad — but then, has the governor of Delaware recently proposed changing the abortion laws, thus making the abortion stats in Delaware a common subject for conversation?
Thanks for your information for Cuomo’s claimed motives for his proposal. I don’t think I buy them, though — overturning Roe would make it easier, not harder, for New York to make any abortion laws it wanted, including no restrictions of any kind, because overturning Roe would kick the whole thing back to the states, excepting things like performing abortions in federal facilities or with federal money. There’s no need for such a pre-emptive strike. I’m not sure whether I’m more likely to believe that Cuomo doesn’t understand that, or that he’s just plain being disingenuous about the politics of this law.
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