The costs of unintended pregnancy

Guttmacher Institute has compiled facts and figures for all 50 states regarding the incidences of and costs of unintended pregnancies. This is a detailed state by state analysis, including statistics on abortion.

I live in Missouri, where these statistics apply (follow the link to Guttmacher for the stats on your state):

• In 2006, 53% of all pregnancies (61,000) in Missouri were unintended, compared with 49% nationally.

• Missouri’s unintended pregnancy rate in 2006 was 51 per 1,000 women aged 15-44. Nationally, the rate was 52 per 1,000, ranging from a low of 36 per 1,000 in New Hampshire to a high of 69 per 1,000 in Mississippi.

• The teen pregnancy rate in Missouri was 63 per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in 2005. The national teen pregnancy rate was 70 per 1,000, ranging from 33 per 1,000 in New Hampshire to 93 per 1,000 in New Mexico.

• In 2006, 61% of unintended pregnancies in Missouri resulted in births and 25% in abortions; the remainder resulted in miscarriages.

• In Missouri in 2006, 46% of all births (37,700) resulted from unintended pregnancies, compared with 38% nationally.

• The services provided by family planning centers in Missouri helped avert 20,800 unintended pregnancies in 2008, which would likely have resulted in 9,200 births and 8,700 abortions.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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