Introduction
In developing a response to this assignment, it was decided to turn to a current public agenda examining statistics regarding abortion law in the United States. As it is known, on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down abortion rights that had been in place for nearly half a century, making non-medical termination of pregnancy impossible in many states (Totenberg & McCammon, 2022). The Pew Research Center, an American sociological agency, conducted an analysis showing that by 2019, more than half of the women in the country (58%) who have had an abortion had never had a child before (Diamant & Besheer, 2022). The issue of inferential statistics in this example is motivated by considering the possibility of extrapolating results from the sample to the general population in the context of the population mean, i.e., no children for women who have had an abortion.
Statistical Model
The conclusion from the Pew Research Center is based on the use of data from the CDC, which collected information from 45 states that reported national abortion results. Specifically, the information included the number of abortions based on the number of children (0, 1, 2, 3, ≥4) and the calculated percentage based on the counted total number of abortions in the state; in other words, there were 45 samples total that provided data to the CDC (CDC, 2021). Thus, for summary statistics, the total number of abortions performed by women without children (n = 214015) was counted and divided by the total known number of abortions in the nation (n = 532719): a figure of 58% of the total national abortion rate was thus obtained. The results of the inferential hypothesis analysis were not reported, but it can be assumed that the hypothesis test was that the average number of women in the country who had abortions and had no children was greater than.50 based on the descriptive statistics. Thus, this was a one-tailed test for which a p-value could be calculated, and a conclusion was drawn about the null hypothesis’s validity. The fact that a reputable agency, the CDC, published the data may indicate the validity of the results.
Conclusion
The results of the population mean to show that women performed a large proportion of the nation’s abortions in 2019 without children. This finding helps to further assess the trend toward abortion, especially in light of the 2022 abortion ban. Childless women have lost that freedom, so it should be
expected a demographic increase over the next few years. Additional research may involve discovering why childless women have had abortions — understanding the predictors will allow a national policy to be adjusted and likely to encourage a return of this right.
References
CDC. (2021). Abortion surveillance — United States, 2019. CDC.
Diamant, J., & Besheer, M. (2022). What the data says about abortion in the U.S. Pew Research Center.
Totenberg, N., & McCammon, S. (2022). Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, ending right to abortion upheld for decades. NPR.