Be Glad Your Mom Didn't Live In New York City

If she had, there's a 40% chance you wouldn't be here today:

New York City is America's undisputed abortion capital, with 40 out of every 100 women in the Big Apple opting to use the controversial procedure to end their pregnancies.

The New York Daily News reports Sunday that there were 91,700 induced abortions in New York in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Including women who travel to New York to take advantage abortion's availability, the city presided over 74 abortions for every 100 live births.

That figure is more than three times the average across the rest of the country, where 24 out of every 100 pregnancies ended in abortion in 2002, according to figures compiled by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

The city's role as an abortion Mecca has become more pronounced as other states continue to adopt more legal restrictions against abortions, the News said.

Currently, 25 states have laws requiring mandatory waiting periods and 35 states require parental consent or notification for minors and two visits before an abortion.

If the Supreme Court were to eliminate abortion as a constitutionally protected right, the number of deliberately terminated pregnancies in New York is likely to jump even higher, according to Lawrence Finer, director for domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute.

"If Roe vs. Wade were overturned and some states outlawed abortions, it's certainly possible we might begin to see more of the interstate travel we saw before," he explained.

That's a statistic that New Yorkers certainly shouldn't be proud of.