What's happening with abortion numbers in Allegheny County?

Reductions in the number of abortions to non-residents of Allegheny County from 2010 to 2015 ​are even greater than the drop in abortions to residents of Allegheny County. The group with fewer abortions was probably students.

What is happening with abortion numbers in Allegheny County since we began advertising in 2011? The statistics help us get a handle on what is going on. The short version? Reductions in the number of abortions to Allegheny non-residents are slightly greater than the drop in abortions to residents of Allegheny County. The group with fewer abortions was probably students.

The second-highest number of abortions performed in Pennsylvania are done within Allegheny County, but the numbers are going down. (Philadelphia County has the highest number, and is responsible for 40 percent of PA's abortions -- but that's another horror story.) Residents of Allegheny County, however, are only part of the County's total. For example, in 2015 residents had 3,384 abortions, but the abortion centers here -- Planned Parenthood, Allegheny Reproductive Services, Magee Womens Hospital -- performed another 2,935 abortions on women from elsewhere. Some would be women living in or near Pittsburgh, who would declare their residence to be another county or state. Some would be women coming from surrounding counties, and even from Ohio or West Virginia. 

The red line in the graph above shows annual numbers of abortions performed in Allegheny County. Under that, the blue line shows the number of abortions performed on Allegheny County residents. As you can see, the red line -- abortions performed -- has fallen slightly more precipitously than the blue line -- abortions to residents. The difference for total abortions performed in Allegheny County between 2010 and 2015 is 1,578, a 20-percent drop. The difference in abortions performed on Allegheny residents over the same period is 695, a 17-percent decline from the first year to the last. ​

 We are comparing abortion  numbers here, and not the ratios of abortions to live births. (Abortion ratios to Allegheny County residents declined 20 percent from 2010 to 2015.) As we don't know where the non-residents come from, we can't compare their abortion numbers to birth numbers in their home counties or states.

There has been a slight change in proportions, too: in 2010, abortions to non-residents were 48 .3 percent of the total; by 2015, they had dropped to 46.4 percent.

​We might think that the drop in non-resident abortions reflected fewer abortions performed on women who live in the counties surrounding Allegheny County: Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland. This is not so: the reduction for abortion numbers for these counties from 2010 to 2015 was only 252, a 15.3 percent difference, smaller than that of Allegheny County's 17 percent. It is probably the case that we would find the same result if we looked at counties even further afield.

So what group is it that lives close enough to Pittsburgh that some would come here for abortions, but its members do not technically reside in the county? Students are the most likely one. They live temporarily in Allegheny County or in neighboring college counties, and they would declare to the abortionists that they were from another county or state. This would be reported to the PA Department of Health, and we see the results in the Annual Abortion Reports.

Our friends at Women's Choice Network, Choices Pregnancy Services, the Pregnancy Resource Center of the South Hills, Alpha-Omega Pregnancy Center in Slippery Rock, and all the other centers near colleges and universities, should keep up their excellent outreach and advertising to this demographic, and perhaps the annual numbers of abortions performed in Allegheny County will continue their downward trend.
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