"One out of every two African-American pregnancies

CDC, 2002 US Abortion Surveillance

n the 37 reporting areas for which race was provided classified according to the same categories used in previous years, approximately 54% of women who obtained legal induced abortions were known to be white, 36% black, and 8% other; for 3%, race was not known (Table 9). The abortion ratio for black women (495 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (164 per 1,000), and the ratio for women of the nonhomogeneous "other" race category (357 per 1,000) was 2.2 times the ratio for white women. The abortion rate for black women (29 per 1,000 women) was 3.0 times the rate for white women (10 per 1,000), whereas the abortion rate for women of other races (20 per 1,000 women) was 2.1 times the rate for white women.
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For women whose age and race were known (35 reporting areas), the differences in age distributions of white and black women were relatively small. White women had a slightly higher percentage of abortions in the youngest (<19 years) and oldest (>35 years) age groups compared with black women (18% versus 17% and 12% versus 9%, respectively), whereas women of other races who had abortions tended to be older (Table 14). For women whose marital status and race were both known (32 reporting areas), the percentage of reported abortions among black women who were unmarried was higher (89%) than that among white women (80%) or among women of other races (64%). Among older (aged >35 years) women obtaining abortions whose age and ethnicity were known and reported adequately (28 reporting areas), the percentage of abortions obtained by non-Hispanic women (12%) exceeded that for Hispanic women (10%) (Table 15). Among women whose marital status and ethnicity were known and reported adequately (27 reporting areas), the percentage of reported abortions obtained by unmarried women was somewhat higher for non-Hispanic women (83%) than for Hispanic women (80%) (Table 15). Adequate data were not available to cross-classify race by Hispanic ethnicity.

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The differential between the abortion ratio for black women and that for white women increased from 2.0 in 1989 (the first year for which black and other races were reported separately) to 3.0 in 2002 (54). In addition, the abortion rate for black women has been approximately three times as high as that for white women (range: 2.6--3.1) since 1991 (the first year for which rates by race were published) (55). These rates by race are substantially lower than rates previously published by NCHS and indicate that the reporting areas for the 2002 report might not be truly representative of the U.S. black female population of reproductive age (27). Census Bureau estimates and birth certificate data indicate that a substantial majority of Hispanic women report themselves as white (5). Therefore, data for certain white women represent white women of Hispanic ethnicity.