More common than ever

I was stunned while flipping through an old Newsweek - an interesting article about the prevalence of abortions. This issue behind the morality of abortions has been discussed many times between my friends and I. I am not here to debate that during the post. However, we always discussed the issue in very broad terms. I suppose because I did not think I had any friends who had an abortion. It's possible I have not, but I doubt it. According to the Newsweek, article 40% of adult women from 1973 to 2005 had an abortion. Here is how they figure:

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that studies reproductive rights, from 1973 to 2005, there were 45 million legal abortions. The United States population in 2005 was 296 million people. Of those 296 million, 150 million of them were female. Of those 150 million, 24 million were children. That leaves 126 million. I rounded up and down to get even numbers. But my point, if you do the math, is almost 40% of women had an abortion from 73 to 05.

Again, this is not entirely accurate math, there were some children who had abortions and there were some women who had more than one abortion. But, let's say instead of 40%, a third of adult women had an abortion. That is still a number that surprised me. My point is that even though I might think I do not know a woman who has had an abortion, I am most likely just naive.