Example Essays Home

FAQ

Acceptable Use Policy

Tech Support

LOG IN!

Click HERE for Instant Access

This is a free preview of the paper.

Join Now
Log In

Abortion

Finding sources and research for the issue of the outcome of abortions among teenagers aged 15-19 was not difficult, but in the same sense it was neither very easy. When I first chose the topic I knew that abortion was far too broad, so I narrowed it down to just teenagers aged 15-19. There is much extensive research on this topic that it is easy to quickly collect but difficult to distinguish what is very relevant to the topic and what does not necessarily need to be used. The sources which I consulted were Planned Parenthood, a family planning organization (though much of the information was collected from their website), the Vanderbilt website, the Alan Guttmacher Institute website, a website called “Lifecall.org”, and a book called The Abortion Factbook by S.K Henshaw and J. Van Vort. There are not too many changes in the way that statistics are collected over the years of 1980-2000. They are mostly derived from the natality reports of the National Center from Health Statistics (NCHS), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention (age distribution of abortions); and the U.S. Bureau of the Census (population estimates). The data presented pertains to the “…woman’s a

ge at the time the pregnancy ended, not the age at which she became pregnant or at which she decided between abortion and carrying to term…the data [is] not adjusted to age or year at conception” (Henshaw, Alan Guttmacher Institute). Locating material was not difficult, except for the years of 1998 – 2000, which did not give information on the number of abortions on the statistical references from Vanderbilt and Alan Guttmacher which I used. Those years I eventually retrieved by contacting Planned Parenthood and having them fax me information. The graph which was conducted showing the rate of only teenage abortions aged 15-19 from the years of 1980 – 2000 shows that teenage abortion was actually at it’s highest point in 1980. Causes for this may be that birth control was still very new and unknown. Contraceptives were not widely practiced. For many women, their choices were adoption, birth, or abortion. Another peak hit in 1989 thru 1990 after a steady decline. From 1990 (the year in which the number of abortions was highest) to 1995, the annual number of legal induced abortions in the United States among teenagers 15 - 19 declined by 15%. From 1995 to 1996, the number increased slightly and then decreased again in 1997. “This change in the number of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control may indicate that the number of legal abortions in the United States is