New York City’s astronomical abortion rate unzipped: 56% repeats, 38% gov’t-funded
The Chiaroscuro Foundation has done something interesting. It asked the New York City Department of Health to provide the zip codes of mothers getting abortions in New York City, this in follow up to its shocking December 2010 report revealing that 41% of all NYC pregnancies ended in abortion in 2009. Worse, the statistic was 60% for black mothers.
Chiaroscuro found:
The zip code with the highest ratio, 10018, is in the Chelsea-Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan, with a ratio of 67%, followed by rates of 60% in two Jamaica, Queens zip codes and in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, 10012, and Central Harlem-Morningside Heights neighborhoods. The five zip codes with the lowest abortion ratios are on the Upper East Side, in Lower Manhattan, on the Upper West Side, and in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The lowest ratio, 6.12%, is in 10162. The 15 highest and lowest zip codes, with selected demographic information, are available here.
Also at the Chiaroscuro Foundation’s request, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed that in 2009 48,627 of the 87,273 abortions in New York City, or 56%, were repeat abortions. 33,401, 38%, were paid for by Medicaid.
Whose fault are repeat abortions? The other side blames abstinence ed for 1st timers. If so, then their own abortion and contraception industries are to blame for reruns, correct?
In a poll conducted earlier this year, 64% of likely voters in NYC thought the Big Apple’s abortion rate was too high. Wonder what they’ll think about the news that they’re paying for over 1/3 of them.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Tenuous sequitur advisory
:)
I agree with CC that Ken the Birther’s comments are inappropriate and offensive and his posts don’t have anything to so with the topic.
But anyway, it’s interesting to see that some of the lowest rates of abortion are in the wealthy Upper West Side. I wonder why this is — could more well-educated, more affluent women be more conscientious about contraceptives, or are they not as sexually active as women in the zip codes where abortion rates are higher? I would like to see the statistics for Philadelphia; they would probably be along the same lines.
“…mr. bo-jangles’ administration…”
I don’t even know what this means, but my guess is that it has something to do with the 60s…
As Phllymiss says, the stats are interesting. Could there be a higher percentage of older/single/gay follks in the areas with fewer abortions? Are the areas with the highest numbers considered the poorest areas? Does NYC have more abortions than other large urban areas?
“The zip code with the highest [abortion] ratio, 10018, is in the Chelsea-Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan,’…
I wonder what the average ratio of weight to height was for these women.
Looks like ‘slick willy’, americas most prolific sperm donor, could still be on the prowl in the ‘Big Apple’. Kind of like a modern day jack the ripper who impregnates his victims instead of killing them.
I can’t even understand what you are trying to imply. That Chelsea Clinton is fat? Or abnormally thin? That anyone except real estate agents and pollsters calls Hell’s Kitchen “Clinton”? What?
As someone who actually knows anything at all about these areas and doesn’t just want to call Chelsea Clinton ugly, or whatever, what I found most surprising is that both Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen (Clinton) are known for having above-average gay and lesbian populations, even for NYC. Most of the zip codes (save for Greenwich Village/Soho) on the highest 15 list are in poorer neighborhoods, but Chelsea is a wealthy area and Hell’s Kitchen, while traditionally blue-collar, is rapidly gentrifying.
I also found it interesting that two adjacent areas in the Village/Soho made the highest and lowest percentage lists.
But anyway, it’s interesting to see that some of the lowest rates of abortion are in the wealthy Upper West Side. I wonder why this is — could more well-educated, more affluent women be more conscientious about contraceptives, or are they not as sexually active as women in the zip codes where abortion rates are higher? I would like to see the statistics for Philadelphia; they would probably be along the same lines.
Phillymiss, I know that personally I don’t know many young, single people who live on the UWS, unless they live with their parents. Both the UES and UWS are relatively “settled” areas, as far as life stages go, and also fairly wealthy in terms of cost of living etc. I’d imagine that the UWS and UES demographics abort more frequently either in college (ie, away from home zip codes) or due to fetal abnormality/selective reduction.
“I don’t even know what this means, but my guess is that it has something to do with the 60s…”
There was a song, Mr. Bojangles, done by Jerry Jeff Walker, in the 60’s. The original Mr. Bojangles was an African American dancer, Bill Robinson who performed in black musical revues and movies in which he danced with Shirley Temple. While I can’t say for sure if Ken was being racist, his use of the term is questionable.
Ken, I know you are a brother for the unborn, but CC is right: the topic is about abortion rates in NYC and not about our President.
The ages look pretty consistent in the chart with a couple of the lowest neighborhoods having average ages in the young 30’s
The repeat abortion statistics raise huge questions about the ‘1 in 4 women will have an abortion’ stat.
And sorry Ken – maybe it’s me, but I never have a clue what you’re talking about.
CC, why would it be racist or derogatory or even “questionable” to call a black man “Mr. Bojangles”? I saw Bill Robinson perform a number in a film with Shirley Temple (I believe the one you’re talking about is called “The Little Colonel”) and he was pretty darn talented. I bet Obama wishes he possessed such a dancing talent. I think he’d consider it a compliment. Of course, I have no idea what resemblance ken sees between the two. Maybe he’ll explain. Or maybe he was thinking of the sixties song all along. Unless you know why, it’s useless to speculate.
Too many people just go around saying “racist” at the drop of a hat. We do not need more of it. The pro-life movement as I have known it is definitely NOT racist.
So, the Bronx is not on the chart at all because it is not in the highest 15 or lowest? I find that kind of hard to believe…hmmm
CC, why would it be racist or derogatory or even “questionable” to call a black man “Mr. Bojangles”? I saw Bill Robinson perform a number in a film with Shirley Temple (I believe the one you’re talking about is called “The Little Colonel”) and he was pretty darn talented.
You’re joking, right? You’re correct that Bill Robinson was a gifted artist (who unfortunately, died broke) but the roles he played – an emasculated, subservient, docile black man saying “yessuh” and “massuh” to white folks — in other words, the stereotype of the happy “darky” — are painful to watch.
If you don’t think calling a black man “Mr. Bojangles” is uber-offensive, please go up to the next black man you meet, address him as “Mr. Bojangles,” and see what happens. This is 2011, not 1911.
Phillymiss, I take you at your word that some people consider this common knowledge, but I had no racist association w/ Mr. Bojangles. I did a quick search on ‘Mr. Bojangles’ and all the positive stuff that Lori mentioned came up. You have to search ‘Mr. Bojangles racist’ to bring up anything about it being used as racist slang. In a yahoo answers forum, most responders didn’t seem to know it was racist, thinking it was either (a) the actor/dancer (b) the Bob Dylan song or (c) a chain chicken restaurant (or something).
So she probably wasn’t joking – I know I had no idea it was some sort of slang.
I would give Lori the benefit of the doubt before assuming the worst.
It’s in the “Born Black Manual” they give you when you’re born black, so you know what to be offended about and we can keep flogging the dead “racism” horse instead of just getting over everything.
NO WONDER WE DIDN’T KNOW. My manual’s for Mexicans. If one more person calls me a Frito Bandito, I’m gonna punch their lights out.
Phillymiss, CT is right. I was completely unaware of any racist associations. I should have said more clearly that I saw the excerpted number from the film, not the entire film, so I guess I just missed the other aspects of the role Robinson played. I never saw anything of him elsewhere except some excerpts from his dances.
I also have never heard anyone actually call a black man Mr. Bojangles, in a pejorative sense or any other sense. It’s evidently just not the custom in the Bronx where I live — and here, believe me, you hear everything you can imagine in the way of racial epithets, including stuff I never could have dreamed of hearing before moving here. I thought I had heard it all, but I guess not.
So yes, please give people the benefit of the doubt. It will benefit you as well.
My assumption is that Ken, like one of my own friends, has been banned from a lot of political forums, and still needing to vent his thoughts, he posts them here.
The sad thing about the statistics in New York is that it proves that hostility toward pregnancy and children is where “choice” has brought us, to a place where more children die than live. Rather than just look at this in horror, I am watching abortion advocates deflect, deny, and distract. No matter what non-sequiters are posted here, 60% in any community, in any zip code, among any race is a horrific, brutal, barbarian, and disgusting number. How can anyone deny that we are committing cultural suicide? How can anyone say, oh, it’s merely a woman’s “choice”?
I am deeply and personally ashamed at what archeologists and anthropologists are going to find out about us as a people.
I get that lots of people might not immediately consider it an insult to call a black man Mr. Bojangles, but it’s like saying that when people call a black man Uncle Tom, they are complimenting him, because any man of any color would hope for the courage to steadfastly refuse to betray the whereabouts of escaped slaves. No. That’s not what is meant when someone calls a black man Uncle Tom, and everyone knows it.
Mr. Bojangles was a black man whose name started with Bo-, two letters ken is somewhat obsessed with (o’bama, B.O., etc) and while I imagine and can only hope that ken’s main reason for repeatedly drawing this comparison is the fact that Bill Robinson was tap-dancing for applause in the only role he was allowed to play (a somewhat clever metaphor if you view Obama as a pandering puppet president – though mocking a very sad situation for black performers through the ages), I don’t think he’d ever draw the comparison were Obama white. I don’t think it would even cross his mind. While Bill Robinson was amazingly talented, as well as a onetime soldier, and worked his way up from Vaudeville in an era when blacks customarily performed in blackface*, he was shackled to the cultural trope of the Tom, forever the helpful smiling butler to the white starlet of the moment, whatever her age. In Vaudeville, he was bound by the two-colored rule, which stated that black people could not be alone onstage; they had to share the stage with a white person. I wonder how many of Bill Robinson’s movies feature him dancing on his own.
*Yes, black people performed in blackface. A recent Broadway musical in the style of a minstrel show used this to great, though controversial, effect, when the nearly all-black cast appeared in the finale wearing cartoonish blackface smiles. It was very uncomfortable to see, especially given that the subject matter of the show was pretty depressing. As the lyrics grew increasingly macabre and heartbreaking, the men wiped their makeup off to reveal unsmiling, legitimately black faces – the faces beneath the masks they had to wear so long. Bill Robinson may have been allowed to take off his makeup, but he was never really allowed to take off his “blackface.”
No surprise Boro Park, with it’s large number of Hasidic Jews, would be quite high in births and low in abortions.
Alexandria…Chelsea-Clinton is a district in NYC; now I’m not from NYC, so I don’t know the local terms, but this wiki article talks about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea,_Manhattan
By the way, I sort of questioned that too that’s why I looked it up.
Hey Andy -
I’m from NYC, born and bred, and I’m very familiar with Chelsea, as well as with Hell’s Kitchen, which some people have renamed Clinton! I actually spend about 80% of my waking hours in Hell’s Kitchen. I was responding to a since-deleted and somewhat nonsensical comment by Ken, where he reacted to the coincidentally named adjacent neighborhoods asking if anyone had checked the weight of the women living there.
I would like to see the statistics for Philadelphia; they would probably be along the same lines.
You’d be wrong. The abortion rate in Philadephia is about 14% as of 2008. That’s about 1/3rd the abortion rate of NYC.
(http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2008/01/abortion_rate_slightly_up_in_pa.)
As Phllymiss says, the stats are interesting. Could there be a higher percentage of older/single/gay follks in the areas with fewer abortions?
What effect would older and gay– as I’m assuming you’re operating under the assumption that these two groups don’t get pregnant– have on the abortion rate which, which is calculated as the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion? Why would you assume that there are more single people in areas where the abortion rate is lowest? If anything, you would expect there to be fewer.
Are the areas with the highest numbers considered the poorest areas?
In general, yes, but don’t turn this into some “the poor can’t access contraception!” diatribe. Aside from the fact that it’s odd to assert that the poor can’t afford contraception but they can afford an abortion, there are actually many reproductive health clinics to be found in NYC (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/fhs/pdirectory.pdf). That’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but it should nip the whole “not being able to find/access/afford” contraception line in the bud.
Does NYC have more abortions than other large urban areas?
Except for maybe DC, yes.
Anyway, quit looking for a silver lining. Face it; all of the pro-choice pontificating has failed.
Since we’re talking about percentages, is there any info. available that indicates what % of prostitutes get abortions ? As “busy” at they are, I would think they might possibly be a significant number ? Just wondering…
While Bill Robinson was amazingly talented, as well as a onetime soldier, and worked his way up from Vaudeville in an era when blacks customarily performed in blackface*, he was shackled to the cultural trope of the Tom, forever the helpful smiling butler to the white starlet of the moment, whatever her age.
Alexandra, thanks for your post; you get what I am talking about. Many black performers went through alot of crap. When Dorothy Dandridge was performing in Las Vegas, she was not allowed to eat in the restaurants there. Ed Sullivan would let her eat at his table and since he was such a big star, no one said anything to him. I always liked him for that. :-)
It’s in the “Born Black Manual” they give you when you’re born black, so you know what to be offended about and we can keep flogging the dead “racism” horse instead of just getting over everything.
What are you talking about Xalisae? You know that I don’t play the race card. If I did, I wouldn’t be here, since prolifers are all supposed to be racist white Republicans. but if I find something questionable, I will speak out about it. And I’m sorry, but racism is not “dead.” Just a few weeks ago my sister and I, two middle-aged, respectable women, were called “nigger” by some idiot driving by. We hadn’t done anything to this person, apparently we were just guilty of BWB (Breathing While Black). Should we just get over that, too?
@Lori, I wasn’t trying to say you were racist, but I hope you understand now why some black people (and some whites) might find Ken’s posts questionable. I’m glad that we had this conversation, as uncomfortable as it might be. Speaking about discomfort, people are raving about the movie “The Help” and I just can’t see it, since my grandmother was “the help” and went through alot of crap, just like the black performers of yesteryear. My mother remembers seeing crosses burned. And this wasn’t in the south, it was around Pittsburgh, PA.
@Some GuyYou’d be wrong. The abortion rate in Philadephia is about 14% as of 2008. That’s about 1/3rd the abortion rate of NYC.
Hmm, that’s interesting. Could it be that there is a strong prolife movement here?
Hmmm. So when the NAACP calls conservative blacks “Uncle Toms,” are they being racist? Or is it only racist when white folk say stuff? How about when white folk quote black folks? So if I were to say that Malcolm X would call Obama a “house Negro” for being a sellout corporatist, would I be racist for quoting what a black man would almost certainly say about a half-black man?
At least Malcolm X had indisputable cred as an African American. And he was indisputably a field Negro.
Now, anyone going to call me racist for complimenting Malcolm X? ;-)