Rebecca Cook/Reuters
Detroit’s abortion rate has reached a staggering 31 percent, new data shows. A total of 5,693 of Detroit’s 18,360 pregnancies in 2012 ended in abortion, while the entire state of Michigan had 22,699 abortions out of 160,219 pregnancies in the same year. The increase in Detroit also comes as abortion rates across the U.S. have flatlined or decreased. “We’re seeing a picture that looks more like some third-world country than someplace in the United States,” said Susan Schooley, chairwoman of the Department of Family Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital. Part of Detroit’s increase, experts say, is thanks to rising poverty. It’s no coincidence the abortion rate peaked in 2008—the worst part of the Great Recession—when 42 percent of women who had abortions were living in poverty. Decreased funding for family planning and contraceptive funding in Michigan is seen as a contributing factor: The budget fell from $5 million to $700,000 in the past seven years, leaving 80,000 people without free family-planning aid.