Dmitriy T.M. alerted us to a new report by the Guttmacher Institute on the characteristics of women who have abortions.  There’s lots of interesting data there, including the figure below that tells us how women are paying for their abortions.

According to the study, 33% of the women in their study were uninsured, but 57% of them paid for their abortions out-of-pocket.  Why?

I was able to track down two reasons.   First, medicaid only covers abortions in the cases of rape and incest or if a woman might die if she proceeds with the pregnancy.  Second, according to another report by Guttmacher, 15 states deny or restrict the coverage of private insurance companies or the insurance plans of employees of the state:

The fact that non-therapeutic abortion is not covered by medicaid and by some private insurers, of course, hurts poor women and their families the most.  While middle and upper class women can always find the money to make up for the gap in their insurance, poor women may not be able to do so.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.