SOME ASPECTS OF ABORTION. 347 



groups as shown in table 18, nothing unusual appears. The average number of 

 abortions per child is highest in the 15 to 19 year group, in which it is 4.8. In 

 the 20 to 24 year group it has dropped to 1.6, and then, as might be expected, a 

 gradual decrease, both in the number of children and of abortions, is noticeable in 

 each half-decade from 15 to 50 years, where it is 0.14. 



The number of abortions per woman ranges from 1.1 in the 15 to 19 year 

 group to 2.7 in the 40 to 44 year group. There is a decided drop in this average 

 in the 45 to 49 year group, but since this group contains only 3 cases, it must be 

 disregarded. In the 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 year groups, the average number of 

 abortions per woman exceeds the average number of children, but after that the 

 reverse is true, these ratios being almost equal in the 25 to 29 and 30 to 34 year 

 groups. The greatest disproportion between abortions and children is reached in 

 the 40 to 44 year group, in which the ratio is 2.08 children for every abortion. 



Taussig found 870 full-term births in 293 women, the average number of 

 children per woman being considerably higher, or 2.9, instead of 1.9 as in this series. 

 The average number of abortions in 201 women was 1.8, instead of 2.6 as in this 

 series. Hellier (1901) found that 1,800 selected married women had borne 6,974 

 children, or an average of 3.87 each, and in Franz's series of 4,255 women, the 

 average number of children per woman was still higher, or 4.77, as compared with 

 1.9 of the present series of 697 women. 



The series of 446 cases of Stumpf form a striking contrast to the present one, 

 for, although the actual number of cases of pregnancy in essentially the above age 

 groups ranges from 89 in the group over 40 to 365 in the 26 to 30 year group, the 

 ratio of abortions per pregnancy differed markedly, as an inspection of table 18 

 will show. Aside from the entire lack of correspondence between the two sets of 

 percentages shown there, especially as far as women below 20 are concerned, in 

 whom the difference is practically 1,600 per cent, Stumpf found two maxima of 

 abortions to births, instead of a gradual decline as in the Carnegie series. Stumpf 's 

 first maximum occurred between 26 and 30, and the second after 40. It also is 

 peculiar that although Stumpf 's ratios are 200 to 1,600 per cent below mine in 

 women below the age of 40 years, they are 200 per cent higher than mine after 

 this age. Since the discrepancies are so great, it is very likely that a number 

 of unknown factors are involved. Hence it is hardly worth while to try to reconcile 

 the remarkable difference. 



The 21 admittedly unmarried women in this series had 25 abortions, or 1.2 

 abortions per woman, and 11 children, or 0.5 child each. Both of these figures are 

 below the average for the professedly married women, yet, as might be surmised, 

 the ratio of abortions to children is considerably higher in this group of the un- 

 married than in the case of all groups of the married except the 15 to 19 year group. 

 It is 2.2 abortions per child. Since the average number of abortions per child in 

 the 15 to 19 year group of professedly married women is more than twice as high 

 as in the small group of the unmarried, it would seem that there is something in 

 the marital relationship of women of these years, or in the attitude toward abortion 



