What's the Status of Women's Reproductive Health in McHenry County?
Looking at data on abortions and contraceptive services.
A week ago, someone leaked a draft opinion on Roe v. Wade that suggests the court is set to overturn the almost 50-year-old decision that protects the right to abortion. This would leave the right to abortion up to states to decide. Illinois is one of only 16 states to have codified the right to abortion into law, which it did in 2019.
To start, I wanted to look at the data on the number of abortions by McHenry County residents. McHenry County data (from the Illinois Department of Public Health) goes back to 1995, more than two decades after the original Roe v. Wade decision, and includes the number of abortions by county of residence.
The number of abortions has decreased more than 28% since 1995. However, it’s important to note that the population of McHenry County has increased 38.3% from the 1995 to the 2020 census—an additional 85,911 people.
To get a better sense of how the rate of abortion has changed, I calculated the number of abortions per 100,000 residents. (This figure is often used when talking about COVID cases to get a sense of the rate across areas with different populations.)
During the same time period, the incidence rate dropped from 180 abortions per 100,000 residents in 1995 to just 93 abortions per 100,000 residents in 2020. While there have been some brief increases over the years, the trend on the whole has been downward.
I also wanted to look at the availability of publicly funded contraceptive services in the county, using data from the Guttmacher Institute Data Center. The Guttmacher Institute has published data for 2010 and 2015.
Two additional publicly funded clinics opened in McHenry County between 2010 and 2015, including one health department clinic. The number of female clients served by publicly funded clinic in the county increased more than 157% during that same time.
The same report noted that 14,040 women (aged 13-44) likely needed public support for contraceptive services and supplies in 2016 based on income—4,820 of those younger than age 20.