Chartsandgraphs: Births & Abortions in RVA

The Capital News Service recently sent me an article about abortions with a link to some raw data at the Virginia Department of Health. You can pull all kinds of interesting things — like, did you know there were zero women ages 14 or 15 married in Richmond in 2009 (Alexandria City had two, however) — but inside are some chartsandgraphs about births and abortions in Richmond.

May 16, 2011; 6:00 AM • by Ross Catrow

The Capital News Service recently sent me an article about abortions with a link to some raw data at the Virginia Department of Health. You can pull all kinds of interesting things — like, did you know there were zero women ages 14 or 15 married in Richmond in 2009 (Alexandria City had two, however) — but below are some chartsandgraphs about births and abortions in Richmond.

A couple of notes: all of the data is from 2003 – 2009. Also, sometimes the numbers of births and abortions will not sum to the total number of pregnancies due to “natural fetal death.” And finally, I don’t claim to have any special surety about what this data means or, even, it’s correctness. It’s just pulled from the PDFs and slapped into some chartsandgraphs.

Total number of births, abortions, and pregnancies in RVA, ’03 – ’09

The total number of births, abortions, and then above that pregnancies, in Richmond.

Pregnancies in RVA, ’09

5,889

% of pregnancies in RVA ending in abortions, ’09

45.75%

Births: 3,195 • Abortions: 2,694

Abortions in RVA by race, ’03 – ’09

On average Africa-Americans account for 66% of abortions in the City. As a reference point, in 2010 the population breakdown by race in Richmond was: 38% white, 57% black, and 5% other.

Average % of teenage abortions, ’03 – ’09

Average % of teenage pregnancies, ’03 – ’09

Note that teenagers are defined as 19 and under.

% of abortions in RVA that are non-marital, ’03 – ’09

The majority of abortions are “non-marital” — about 80% since 2003. While the number of abortions per year has stayed generally consistent the percent that were non-marital took a big dip in 2008. Which leads to this surprising graph:

Total number of marital abortions in RVA, ’03 – ’09

This graph really confused me — and I’m not certain I haven’t made a terrible typo. Perhaps something changed in 2007 to reclassify a procedure that in 2006 was not an abortion. Maybe a decrease in the divorce rate led to just more married people? I don’t know, but the amount of married people getting abortions in 2008 is almost five times greater than in 2003.