Working with data

I started working with data more seriously when I had time and opportunity after relocating and taking a buyout from my full-time newspaper job as a photojournalist and photo editor. I started with Google’s Data Analytics Certificate program and continued with data journalism courses from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, NICAR, Esri, and others. I enjoyed the material and found the data community supportive and encouraging. I realized that like a camera, a thoughtful analysis or visualization can reveal overlooked or unseen facets of life that are detailed and rich and essential to understanding an issue or group of people. Like another lens in the camera bag, it can be a tool to see subjects differently.

A few months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and ended federal abortion rights, I decided to continue a previous project examining Indiana’s Terminated Pregnancy Reports, published annually by the Indiana Department of Health to better understand the context of abortion in my new state before proposed changes in state law were passed.

It would be impossible to address all the questions surrounding abortion in America today, so I focused on the recent historical context of abortion in Indiana, the first state to pass more restrictive abortion legislation. When the state releases abortion data for 2022, I expect the impacts of the short-lived abortion ban will be easier to understand thanks to the context I now understand from analyzing data from the past. You can see the analysis here and access the Github repository here.