NYC Stats: 39% of Pregnancies in 2009 End in Abortion

New York City released its statistics for 2009, and the facts are startling.

First, there were over 225,000 pregnancies within the City proper.  Of those pregnancies, over 87,000 ended in an "induced termination" or abortion.

It works out to nearly 39% or over one-third of pregnancies in NYC are terminated.  To put that number in perspective, I live in a city of nearly 30,000.  The abortions in NYC in 2009 wiped out the population of my town THREE times.

Of those terminations, 29% occurred in the 20 -24 year old age group.  Perhaps more startling is that nearly 6.5% of those abortions were in the 17 and under age groups.

Ethnically, 47% of the abortions were performed on African-American women.  The next largest ethnic group getting abortions were Hispanics, with 33%.

My question is: why were there 87,000+ unprotected sexual encounters?  Naturally, a baby was not conceived every time someone had unprotected sex, but in 87,000 times of unprotected sex in just New York City, one was.

This truly is a societal, religious, and personal issue.  One that women should care about!  Why are we letting our friends, children, and ourselves be involved in reckless sexual activity without a concern for the consequences?

Think about this:  The abortion debate would resolve itself if we stopped using it as a means of birth control.  If society worked to prevent conception, whether by self-control or birth control, there would be minimal need for abortion.

Why do we accept that invasive surgery is the best solution?  How many people would continue to do an activity that could result in surgery if taking medication, self-control or other options were available to prevent it?

Regardless of your stance on abortion, surgery is a big deal.  With any surgery, there are emotional, physical, and mental consequences.  Have your appendix removed, and you will have physical, emotional and mental consequences.  Remove your wisdom teeth.  Have plastic surgery.  The bottom line is that there will be consequences - and abortion is not immune to this, as the woman involved will have to work through the mental, emotional and physical consequences of it.

The statistics do not show the number of women who got a sexually transmitted disease, became infertile or contracted a fatal disease due to reckless sexual behavior, but those numbers likely greatly exceed the abortion numbers.

As Christians, we need to do a better job framing the issues.  While this is a debate about the death of 87,000 individuals, it is also a debate about the people creating and discarding those individuals.  We need to encourage self-control and wisdom in sexual decision making.

More importantly, we need walk the walk and show restraint: by not supporting the porn-ification of the culture and demonstrating modesty and faithfulness.  Most importantly, we need to show compassion to those who have fallen into this lifestyle who bear the scars of bad choices and the consequences of their actions.