By the Numbers

My brother and I tend to call each other when we're out driving and we see interesting bumper stickers.  The other day, he called me and said he was sitting behind someone with a bumper sticker that read, "1 in 4 babies dies from choice."  We both thought that number seemed a bit off, so I did some Google-ing and found this at the Guttmacher Institute website:

"Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion."

So I guess that number was (fairly) accurate.

What interested me more, though, was the statistic I found right above that one:

"Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended."  Wow.

So then I thought, I wonder what the stats are in Europe, where they are much more open about sexuality and provide comprehensive sex ed and easier access to abortion.

I couldn't find useful comparisons on the whole population, since I'm lazy and unwilling to go past the first page of Google results, but I did find a teen comparison on the Advocates for Youth Site.  According to their numbers:

"In the United States, the teen abortion rate is twice that of Germany and more than 1.5 times that of the Netherlands. "

You can read their full report here: http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=419&Itemid=177

So what does this tell me?  Our abortion rate could be much lower than it is if we quit insisting on turning a blind eye to the realities of sex.  We seem to tell kids, "Sex is dirty, scary and dangerous, so you should save it for the person you really love and never give it to anyone else."  How realistic is that point of view?

Does it make me sad that our abortion rate is practically 25%?  I guess.  But not because I think "babies" are dying.  It's because I think many of the women who have been put in a position to choose abortion may not have had to do so if they had reasonable access to birth control and education.