ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 8, 1996 TAG: 9608080023
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Fewer teen-agers are having abortions, according to a survey of nearly 10,000 women who have had the procedures. Six in 10 of the women say they were using contraceptives that failed.
The study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, to be published today, provides the most extensive look at who gets abortions since the nonprofit organization's last check in 1987.
While government data show 1.3 million Americans have abortions every year, they provides very little information on the demographics of abortion.
Although Guttmacher is affiliated with Planned Parenthood and is regarded as favoring abortion rights, the government often cites its abortion figures as reliable supplements to the meager federal data.
The Guttmacher report confirms mostly white, middle-class women get abortions, because they make up the bulk of the nation's women of childbearing age.
Young women still are most likely to get abortions - but the teen-agers' share has dropped, from 25.5 percent in 1987 to 21.5 percent last year, Guttmacher researchers discovered.
``We can't entirely account for that'' drop, said study author Stanley Henshaw, who noted that the overall U.S. abortion rate has dropped about 10 percent in recent years while the rate of teen-agers who gave birth rose.
``Part of the reason is that they're continuing more of their pregnancies,'' he added.
At the same time, 57.5 percent of women who had abortions surveyed say they were using a contraceptive the month they became pregnant. That's a rise from the 51.3 percent in 1987, and the increase was greatest among teen-agers, Henshaw said.
No contraceptive is perfect, but studies show they usually fail when they're misused. A second study that appears today in Guttmacher's journal, Family Planning Perspectives, found that half of 103 college students given the birth control pill were skipping at least three pills a month.
``Using a (contraceptive) method helps you, but you're still taking a chance if you're not using it correctly every time,'' Henshaw said.
Guttmacher offered questionnaires to 11,288 women who received abortions at 100 selected hospitals, clinics or doctors offices in 1994 and 1995. They received completed forms from 9,985 women.
The survey concluded women who are Hispanic or black, poor and live with someone they're not married to continue to have a statistically disproportionate share of abortions.
For example, nonwhite women make up 18.9 percent of the childbearing-age population, but accounted for 38.7 percent of the abortions, Henshaw reported.
Women with family incomes below $15,000 accounted for 28.7 percent of abortions yet make up just 15.4 percent of the childbearing-age population. And unmarried women living with men accounted for 20.2 percent of abortions, yet constitute just 5.8 percent of the population, the survey found.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB