Health officials speculate the ski trade may have something to do with Summit County's ratio of abortions to live births, twice that of any other county in Utah.
There were 400 fewer abortions in Utah in 1991, and the state's ratio of 104 abortions to 1,000 live births remains well below the national ratio of 345 per 1,000, according to figures released recently by the Utah Department of Health.For more than a decade, Summit County has had the highest ratio of abortions to live births. Its 1991 ratio of 340 abortions per 1,000 births was a significant drop from the 1987 peak ratio of 434 to 1,000.
Diana Maxwell, a nurse practitioner at the Summit County Health Department in Coalville, said, "A lot of people come to Park City from out of state and have a little different background where abortion is more accepted."
The county's high teen pregnancy rate has some effect, as does the ski trade, Maxwell said.
"We probably have a higher rate of the swinging singles generation, especially because of the ski industry. That attracts a lot of young people," she said.
John Brockert, director of the Health Department Vital Statistics Bureau, also speculated that the ski trade could be a factor in Summit County's abortion ratio.
Nearly a fourth of Utah abortions are performed on adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 years. While that number has increased slightly since 1975, the number of adolescents who become pregnant and give birth has increased "dramatically," during that time, according to a recently released health department report on adolescent pregnancy.
In 1975, for example, 25 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds who had a live birth were unmarried. By 1990, 64 percent were unmarried.