Abortion stats
Stats NZ has published the annual abortion stats. Looking at the graph the abortion rate seems to have been dropping since 2007 and is now a 12 year low.
The abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 has dropped to 3.6 – it was last this low in 1994.
In terms of pregnancies, 1.7% of pregnancies end in a termination. That is a pretty low rate.
62% of women who had an abortion, had never had one previously. 13% had two or more previously. This rate is growing – it was 10% a decade ago.
18.2% of abortions are on teenagers. 28.1% are to those aged over 30.
The age range with the highest abortion rate is 20 to 24 year olds and then 25 to 29 year olds.
45% of women having an abortion have no chidren. 55% have at least one child and 34% have at least two.
94.3% of pregnancies occur within 13 weeks. 55% are within 9 weeks.
They supply crude numbers of abortions by ethnicity, not not the rate by ethnicity. A quick contrast to the population states finds that Maori, Pacific and Asian ethnicities both have around double the abortion rate of Europeans. The Middle East, Latin American and African rate is around 1.5 times the European one only.
Finally we have the abortion rate (per 1,000 women 15 – 44) by country:
- Germany 7.3
- Netherland 8.7
- Finland 10.2
- Scotland 12.3
- Denmark 15.5
- Norway 16.2
- England 17.1
- France 17.2
- NZ 18.1
- US 19.6
- Sweden 20.9
It would be interesting to see a fuller set of international data.