I have had a heavy heart for the issue of abortion recently...I found the following from:
http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/bioethics/abortion/A000002160.cfm
Abortion Statistics
by Carrie Gordon Earll
How many abortions have occurred in the U.S. since legalization in 1973? What are some characteristics of women who have abortions?
The United States has one of the highest abortion rates among developed countries.1
Based on accumulative data from the two primary sources of U.S. abortion statistics (Centers for Disease Control and Alan Guttmacher Institute), it's estimated that around one million abortions take place annually and more than 44 million abortions have been performed in the U.S. since 1973.
Reported number of
legal abortions in the
United States for selected years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Abortion Surveillance Report 20042:
1972 — 586,760
1973 — 615,831
1980 — 1,297,606
1985 — 1,328,570
1990 — 1,429,247
1992 — 1,359,146
1995 — 1,210,883
1996 — 1,225,937
1997 — 1,186,039
*1998 — 884,273
*1999 — 861,789
*2000 — 857,475
*2001 — 853,485
*2002 — 854,122
*2003 — 848,163
*2004 — 838,226
*At first glance, the table listed above appears to show a considerable drop in the number of reported abortions performed in the U.S. between 1997 and 1998. Upon closer examination, however, the decrease is more moderate.
Here's why: In 1998 and 1999, the number of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) excluded data from four states - Alaska, California, New Hampshire and Oklahoma - that did not provide information. Data from Oklahoma were included in the 2000-2003 statistics. In order to compare reported abortions in 1997 to the subsequent years, the CDC recalculated abortion totals for 1995, 1996 and 1997, minus these non-reporting states. The adjusted number of reported abortions are as follows:
Year
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Reported Abortions
908,243
934,549
900,171
884,273
861,789
857,475
853,485
854,122
848,163
839,226
Change from Previous Year
unavailable
3 percent increase
3.5 percent decrease
2 percent decrease
2.5 percent decrease
0.5 percent decrease
0.5 percent decrease
0.1 percent increase
0.7 percent decrease
1.1 percent decrease
The CDC attributes the majority of the decrease in reported abortions after 1997 to the absence of California’s data. In 1997, the CDC estimated the number of abortions in California to be 275,700. The CDC acknowledges that the numbers of abortions reported to the agency are probably lower than the actual number performed. The lack of uniform, mandatory abortion reporting for all fifty states hampers the CDC’s ability to accurately report the number of abortion performed in the U.S, as evidenced in the 1998 to 2004 reports.
According to the CDC report, in 2004:
41 percent women who had abortions in the U.S. had no other children;
44 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. had at least one previous abortion;
82 percent of women who had abortions in the U.S. were unmarried.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood:
At current rates, an estimated 43 percent of American women will have at least one abortion by the age of 45.
Two-thirds of all abortions are among never-married women.
Fifty-two percent of U.S. women having abortions are younger than 25 years old.
About 13,000 abortions each year are attributed to rape and incest—representing 1 percent of all abortions.3
(This page was originally posted on September 9, 2003.)
Carrie Gordon Earll is the Senior Policy Analyst for Bioethics at Focus on the Family and a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity.
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1Alan Guttmacher Institute, Facts in Brief, New York, NY, 1995.
2Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “Abortion Surveillance 2003 Report,"November 23, 2007, accessed online January 8, 2008 at
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/ss/ss5609.pdf
3Alan Guttmacher, Facts in Brief: Induced Abortion, 2002.
