Who cares how many abortions are performed here or anywhere? Keep your hands minds and laws off of women's bodies!!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite anonymous quotes: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

on a different note, Jaya, can't you do a piece reminding everyone that most tenants are being illegally charged excessive rent and should check their apt via HRC at nyc.gov to find out what the true rent should be?

oh, man, are you serious? can you be more specific? i searched a bunch of different keywords on nyc.gov and couldn't find it.

can't vouch for NYC.gov itself... sorry... just google HRC in nyc.

you can call them and give them your apt infor and they quickly look it up.

almost every time a tenatn in a rent stabilized unit moves or is pushed out, few landlords tell the NEW tenants the rent is low. they just jack it up and no one ever knows the truth.

Thanks, Rod. Good info.

Ouch. 80% are black or hispanic, with the majority in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The data isn't detailed enough to accurately cross-tabulate, but it's pointing to scary high numbers in the ghettos and projects of the South Bronx and East Brooklyn, where the unmarried and teenage birth rates are highest. It recalls the theory in Freakonomics about Roe v. Wade resulting in the drop in crime in America's cities. You can argue about the socio-economic factors behind it, but the raw truth is that a child of a racial minority born to an unmarried teenage mother in an impoverished urban area has an off-the-charts likelihood of becoming a criminal. It's uncomfortable to make this association, but these abortions are undoubtedly keeping the city's crime rate down for the next 20+ years.

Curious, IJ, when you say "majority in the Bronx and Brooklyn" are you basing that on percentage, the whole number, or per capita basis? I am too lazy to do the math, but on a per capita basis I suspect the data might show that Brooklyn has fewer abortions per capita than Manhattan.

I find it regretful that data was posted in a way that kind of villifies the Bronx and does not take into account relative populations of the boroughs except to call out the Bronx's %s.

I don't want vilify the borough but I think we all know sh*t is fucked up there south of Fordham Road. Here's the breakdown:

Terminations citywide: 98,533 (100%)
Brooklyn: 31,305 (32%)
Bronx: 21,920 (22%)
Queens: 20,023 (20%)
Manhattan: 13,838 (14%)
Staten Island: 3,468 (4%)
Elsewhere or unkown: 8,339 (8%)

So while it is accurate to say that the Bronx and Brooklyn represent the majority (54%), yes - it could be a little misleading because they do combine for 47% of the city's overall population. But the truth is, when you break it down per capita, the picture is bleakest for the Bronx. Below are the numbers per capita, or in this case per 1000 residents:

Bronx: 15.69
Brooklyn: 12.19
Queens: 8.68
Manhattan: 8.49
Staten Island: 7.05

So, per capita, Brooklyn has an abortion rate about 50% higher than Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, and in the Bronx it's almost double. There is a chart in the report showing the community districts where the percentage of births to teenagers is over 11.4% (!) and they are for the most part all in the South Bronx and East New York/Brownsville parts of Brooklyn. One can't be sure without the raw data to cross-tabulate, but since 40% of the citywide terminations are to teenage patients, and 80% are black and latino, it suggests that in these parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn where the both the teenage birth rate is highest and the black and latino segment of the population is extremely high, there are likely tremendously high abortion rates - who knows, maybe as high as 1 out of 4 women have had an abortion.

But from a public policy perspective, it's not the abortions that are the problem. The abortions are actually saving the city from having tens of thousands more likely criminals. The problem is the rate of unprotected sex going on that is causing all these abortions.

I completely agree that abortions aren't the problem, and should remain legal forever, everywhere, in perpetuity, until the end of time or an asteroid destroys the earth (2036?). You can't really outlaw a legal procedure that 35% of all sexually active women in the US will need before they turn 45.

Unprotected sex and birth control's failure to be 100% effective are obviously the two giant problems.

Thanks for doing the per capita math. It's interesting. Here's an interesting exercise based on that.

On average, birth control methods fail for 15 out of 100 women (taking the average effectiveness of sterilization at 100% and spermicides/withdrawal at 30%, granted not adjusted for one method's popularity over another, but it's the best we can do for now).

So adjusting for per capita to 100, and to find out what percentage of contraceptive failures end in abortion:
Bronx 1.569 abortions per 100 women vs 15 unwanted pregnancies as a result of contraception failures/100 women= 10%
Brooklyn 1.219 abortions versus 15 conc. fail pregnancies = 8%
Queens 0.868 abortions out of 15 conc. fail pregnancies = 5%
Manhattan 0.849 abortions out of 15 conc. fail pregnancies = 5%
Staten Island 0.705 abortions out of 15 conc. fail pregnancies = <5%

If that math is correct, it means that very few of the pregnancies caused by contraception failure end in abortion. Which is really surprising. You would think people using contraception would really really not want a kid, and would then have an abortion. Can that be right? And 90 - 95% of abortions are from people who didn't use any contraception, not even pulling out? There was probably an easier way to get to that number, but wow, people really need to get busy with the birth control. Let's start with the fact that guys need more than one option, like a pill or a fur-lined-too-hot-ball-bagger, or an anti-GPS for sperm, so that the *condom whine* is no longer an excuse.

more minority girls get pregnant because they are more disadvantaged because the right wing kooks institutionalized racism.

the poor can't even pay their rent.

how the fuck they gonna raise their kids while just struggling to FEED them?

we can only blame the right wing kooks for the fact that babies are having babies.

when you're a 13 year old girl with no future and no love, the only thing left you have is sex.

this ain't rocket science people.

Nice work Bloomie. You've clearly been doing your homework at the Marty Markowitz school of statistical analysis.

What does he mean he "doesn't know?" Is Bloomberg saying his own Dept of Health put forth phony statistics?

it was a fraud-ian slip.

(he was saying "i cheat all stats. doesn't everyone?")

This was meant to be a reply to SFNY above:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02...

Despite the contention of some critics that New York, with its liberal abortion laws, is a destination state for abortion, nonresidents accounted for only about 7,000 of these abortions. (Factoring out nonresidents does not alter the 41 percent abortion rate, because 10,000 nonresidents also gave birth in the city.)

>Obviously, it seems to me that many women are using abortion as an easy >convenience.

Obviously Dead Himmler, you're an idiot. Try talking to the female species occasionally, and learn how "easy of a convenience" an abortion is.

I have heard that before but based on the numbers I not sure I'm buying it anymore. I am more of an empirical evidence guy.

I actually agree with you. Abortion is anything but a convenient experience for women. It is often physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually traumatizing for them. Many bitterly regret it. Check out the Silent No More organization if you want to hear from some of those women.

http://www.silentnomoreawarene...

Lasting psychological detriment has been disproven repeatedly. Let it go.

So just ignore the word of the many women who tell us first they've been permanently scared by the experience? Clearly they are just making it up, let's believe the studies instead.