In The Faith - A Chronicle of the Christian Faith

Who gets abortions? The answer might surprise you - AP

Who are these women?

Much of the public debate focuses on teens, as evidenced by the constant wrangling over parental notification laws and movies like the current hit Juno, in which the pregnant heroine heads to an abortion clinic, then decides to have the baby.

In fact, the women come from virtually every demographic sector. But year after year the statistics reveal that black women and economically struggling women — who have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies — are far more likely than others to have abortions. About 13 percent of American women are black, yet new figures from the Centers for Disease Control show they account for 35 percent of the abortions.

Black abortion opponents depict this phenomenon in dire terms — “genocide” and “holocaust,” for example. Often, however, the women getting the abortions maintain they act in the interests of children they already have.

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