Some Actual Real Facts About Abortion

By Irin Carmon | May 3, 2011 | 10:05pm

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It’s tough out there these days for the fact-based community, particularly when it comes to abortion. There are senators not intending to make factual statements. There are ex-Senators deliberately making inflammatory and misleading statements. And then there’s the House of Representatives, once again seeking to limit abortion access as much as legally possible, if not more.

The next time you have a fight at the dinner table or in a comment thread, you can refer to this handy Guttmacher video for some actual, verified information about abortion in the United States. There’s nothing that isn’t already in the public domain, but sometimes you have to put it in front of people. Like that almost one out of three women will have an abortion before age 45. Like that teens account for fewer than two in ten abortions, and those teens are older. That most women who have abortions already have one child or more. That three out of four describe themselves as religiously affiliated. In other words, these are women who make the decision they need to make for themselves, the best that they can, in the middle of a storm of misinformation and politicization.