Abortion becoming less of an issue for women

WASHINGTON -- Abortion may flare up as the most emotional issue for senators and activists when confirmation hearings begin this summer for President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. But, statistically, it is becoming less and less of a factor for American women.

The national abortion rate has been declining for more than two decades. It is now at its lowest since 1974, the year after the court's Roe v. Wade decision overturned states' abortion bans by ruling that a woman's decision to terminate pregnancy through surgery is a matter of privacy protected by the Constitution.

Utah abortion rates have also been going down steadily since abortion's peak in 1980, according to data from the state Department of Health.

Activists on both sides of the fight say pro-choice Americans have been less passionate about their beliefs in recent years than their pro-life counterparts -- perhaps partly because women who are now of peak abortion ages were born after Roe. Some may take legal abortion for granted. Others may be influenced by mothers, siblings or friends who had negative experiences with abortion or regrets years later.

"It's a very different way that 20- and 30-year-olds are seeing this (nowadays)," said Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America, an anti-abortion group for which Roberts' wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, serves as legal counsel. "It's not about criminalizing it. They just don't want to see it happen."

To an extent, abortion rights advocates agree.

"The major thing you're seeing is the increased intensity around prevention," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for NARAL Pro-Choice America. "People want to reduce the need for abortions."

But Lake said past court fights have shown that pro-choice women snap to attention when they feel their right to choose is vulnerable. "People worry about things when they need to."

Over the years, religious conservatives who believe life begins at conception have sought justices who would chip away at or throw out the Roe decision. While Roberts has given them nothing concrete to go on, some are hopeful he would tip a divided court in that direction.

Meanwhile, data released last month by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, says that fewer than 21 of every 1,000 women, ages 15-44, had an abortion in 2002, the most recent year for which data was available. That compares with a rate of more than 29 per 1,000 at abortion's peak in the United States, in 1980 and 1981. If the trend continues, abortion could soon recede to its 1974 rate, about 19 per 1,000 per women of childbearing age.

Utah abortion rates are much lower than national figures, but have seen similar declines in the past two decades, according to the state health department. In 2002, 6.1 of every 1,000 Utah women, ages 15-44, had an abortion. In 1980, the abortion rate was almost double that, at 11.2 of every 1,000 women. Abortion's decline has coincided with a number of trends:

-- Birth control methods have become more widely available, socially acceptable and finely tuned, including longer-acting hormonal contraceptives, such as implants and patches. In 1995, just 0.8 percent of women said they had used so-called emergency contraception such as the "morning-after" pill, or a concentrated dose of birth control pills, to increase the chances of blocking pregnancy after unprotected intercourse; by 2002, 4.2 percent of women said they had used emergency contraception.

-- More women attend college and pursue careers, achievements that researchers say correlate with lower rates of unintended pregnancy.

-- The number of abortion providers has been declining, and providers are scarce in many areas of the country.

-- Teen pregnancy is down, and the number of states that require parental notification for teen abortions is up. Abstinence programs in schools and involvement in organized religion are more prevalent in some parts of the country, since religious conservatism has found a greater voice over the past decade in Congress, and, more recently, the White House.

The overall decline in the abortion rate, however, obscures a socioeconomic dichotomy that could be politically telling as Democrats plot how strongly to press Roberts for his views.

While abortions have plummeted among wealthier women, they actually rose among poor women during the second half of the 1990s. This pattern played out as the U.S. economy flourished, and as welfare reform legislation ushered poor, single mothers out of the home and into generally low-paying work.

Comparing demographic subsets from 1994 and 2000, researchers found that the abortion rate among middle- and upper-income women dropped in those years, from 16 per 1,000 to 10 per 1,000. Poor women, who tend to be low-propensity voters, turned more often to abortion -- from 36 per 1,000 in 1994 to 44 per 1,000 in 2000.

Overall, Americans still strongly support the Roe decision, even if they wouldn't favor abortion for themselves or their sexual partners. In a CBS News poll this month, 59 percent saw the ruling as a "good thing," while 32 percent felt it was a "bad thing." A Gallup poll in late June found 65 percent of respondents want the next Supreme Court justice to be someone who would uphold Roe, while 29 percent would want the justice to side with overturning it.

Contributing: Angie Welling, Deseret Morning News

Copyright C 2005 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.