Abortions in U.S. drop to historic low
Fewer U.S. women are receiving abortions than at any time since Roe vs. Wade, according to new government figures announced Wednesday.
In 2015, a total of 638,169 abortions were reported, representing a decrease of 2 percent from 652,639 abortions in 2014. The abortion rate was 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women in 2015, compared with 12.1 in 2014 and 15.9 in 2006.
In the years immediately after abortion was legalized nationwide in 1973, the number of legal abortions increased dramatically, reaching its peak in the 1980s. Abortions then began decreasing
at a slow rate until around 2006-08, when they increased slightly, followed by even greater decreases in recent years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance report comes at a heated time for abortion politics in this country, with Trump administration officials introducing new policies to reduce funding to abortion providers and state legislatures debating ever more restrictive laws regarding abortion.
Just this week, a federal court in Mississippi blocked that state’s ban against abortions past 15 weeks gestation. In signing the bill into law, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant had earlier said that he had hoped to make the state the “safest place in America for an unborn child.”
While the CDC paper did not delve into the reasons for the decline, researchers have cited improved contraceptive access, which has led to a decrease in unintended pregnancies, especially among teenagers, as well as the state laws regarding parental consent, waiting periods and other conditions that make it more difficult for women to get abortions.
The data isn’t 100 percent complete — California, Maryland and New Hampshire did not participate, and the reporting is better in some places than others — but it nonetheless provides a window into the overall trends and demographics of who is seeking abortions. The report shows tremendous variation by age, race and geographic region.
While the abortion rate decreased across all age groups in 2015, women in their 20s accounted for nearly 60 percent of all abortions. The abortion rate was 19.9 for women ages 20 to 24 and 17.9 for ages 25 to 29.
White women had the lowest abortion rate, at 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women, and black women had the highest abortion rate at 25.1 per 1,000. “The findings in this report indicate that the number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions have de- clined across all race/ethnicity groups but that welldocumented disparities persist,” wrote Tara C. Jatlaoui, from the CDC’s division of reproductive health and one of the co-authors.
There also was considerable variation among jurisdictions, from a rate of 2.8 abortions in South Dakota to 23.1 abortions in New York.
One major source of controversy in recent years has been the widespread availability of medical abortions or pills such as RU-486 that can be taken to induce abortion without surgical intervention. In 2015, about a quarter of all abortions involved medical abortion, which can be done only early in a pregnancy.
The report did not have information about deaths from complications of abortion in 2015, saying the data was still being assessed. In 2014, six women died as a result of legal induced abortion.