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NEW YORK, NY, September 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New data on New York City’s abortion statistics reveals an abortion ratio almost twice the national average. The report, provided by the New York City Department of Health at the request of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a New York City non-for-profit organization that supports alternatives to abortion, said that of 225,667 pregnancies in 2009, there were 87,273 abortions.

The detailed data about abortion in New York has been published at NY41percent.com in the form of an interactive graphic.

Abortion rate statistics show that the zip code with the highest abortion ratio in the city, 67%, is in Manhattan’s Chelsea-Clinton neighborhood, followed by rates of 60% in two Jamaica, Queens zip codes and in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Central Harlem-Morningside Heights neighborhoods.

The five zip codes with the lowest abortion ratios are on the Upper East Side, in Lower Manhattan, on the Upper West Side, and in Borough Park, Brooklyn. While there are several mostly white neighborhoods among the highest rates, there is not a zip code with less than 57% white residents according to 2010 census data among the lowest rates. About 60% of African-American women’s unborn babies were aborted, 41.3% for Hispanic women, 22.7% for Asians, and 21.4% for Caucasians.

The data revealed that in 2009, 48,627 of the 87,273 abortions in New York City, or 56%, were repeat abortions. 33,401, 38%, were paid for by Medicaid.

“The Chiaroscuro Foundation is grateful to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for providing this detailed data; no city in the nation keeps better, more current records,” said Chiaroscuro Foundation Executive Director Greg Pfundstein. “ Even so, given the city’s extremely high abortion rate, we renew our call for Mayor Bloomberg to instruct the Department to release the data in an even more current fashion: preliminarily month by month throughout the year. Remember, we are still talking about 2009 data.”

“By being able to measure where the highest rates of abortion are occurring in the city, we can determine over time what methods of outreach work best to lower those rates,” he said.

64% of New Yorkers believe the abortion rate is too high in New York City, including 57% of pro-choice women, according to a poll conducted by the polling firm McLaughlin & Associates for the Chiaroscuro Foundation.  74% believe that the overall 60% abortion rate in the African American community is too high.  The Chiaroscuro Foundation is hoping to lower the number of abortions in New York City over time by working with New Yorkers and organizations that agree that the rate of abortion in New York is too high. It has pledged $1 million for 2011 to cut the city’s abortion rate.