91,700
abortions in city
BY PAUL H.B. SHIN
New York Daily News
January 15, 2005
For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in
2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the
abortion capital of the country.
And abortions for out-of-town women performed in the city increased
from 57 to 70 out of every 1,000 between 1996 and 2004, a subtle yet
noticeable trend that experts say may reflect growing hurdles against
the procedure in more conservative parts of the country.
The new Vital Statistics report released by the city Department of
Health this month shows there were 124,100 live births, 11,700
spontaneous abortions and 91,700 induced abortions in the city in 2004.
That means 40 out of 100 pregnancies in the city ended in a planned
abortion - almost double the national average of 24 of 100 pregnancies
in 2002, estimated by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Manhattan-based
nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.
The city's role as a haven for women seeking to end pregnancies may
become more pronounced as other states continue to adopt more legal
restrictions against abortions - such as laws requiring mandatory
waiting periods (25 states), parental consent or notification for
minors (35 states) and two visits before an abortion (six states).
"If clinics are hard to get to, or the services are just unavailable,
people are going to travel to get what in my mind is a critical public
health service," said Joan Malin, president of Planned Parenthood of
New York City.
The organization's Margaret Sanger Center in Manhattan is the largest
abortion provider in New York, with 11,000 abortions performed a year.
Out-of-towners make up less than 2% of those receiving abortions at the
center, but the number has gone up more than 20% in the last year,
Malin said.
But abortion opponents called the city's high rate of procedures a
"tragic" result of "marketing the culture of death."
"New York City has fashioned itself as being the philosophical center
of 'abortion on demand,' and it has a thriving industry to show for
it," said Christina Fadden Fitch, legislative director of the New York
State Right to Life Committee.
The influx into the city of women seeking abortions could become a
deluge - as it was in the early 1970s - if the landmark Roe vs. Wade
decision legalizing abortions nationwide is repealed.
"If Roe vs. Wade were overturned and some states outlawed abortions,
it's certainly possible we might begin to see more of the interstate
travel we saw before," said Lawrence Finer, director for domestic
research at the Guttmacher Institute.
That is what abortion-rights advocates feel may happen if Supreme Court
nominee Samuel Alito is appointed to the bench.
At his Senate confirmation hearings this week, Alito refused to
describe Roe vs. Wade as a settled precedent. Under grilling from Sen.
Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), he also refused to distance himself from his
1985 opinion stating that women do not have a constitutional right to
an abortion.
"The evidence is clear that Judge Alito opposes the constitutional
right for a woman to choose an abortion, and were he to be confirmed, I
would really be concerned about the future of Roe [vs. Wade] and the
future of access, particularly for poor women," Malin said.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion-rights advocacy group,
estimates that if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, abortions would likely
be banned in 21 states, with the procedure at "medium risk" of being
prohibited in another nine states.