Abortions in U.S. register slight rise

NEW YORK — Abortions in the United States appear to be inching up after a long decline, though officials are cautious about calling it an upward trend because a government report issued Wednesday is incomplete.

National abortion figures in 2017 reached their lowest level since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions.

But over the next two years, there were small increases in the abortion rate and numbers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

They rose 1% in 2018. The next year, the numbers increased 2% and the rate per 1,000 women of child-bearing age rose 1%.

The CDC report represents the latest available data on U.S. abortions. But it must be interpreted cautiously because it is based on voluntary reporting and is not comprehensive, experts say.

Among its limitations: It does not include abortions from three states — including California, the nation’s most populous state. Other states may have significant undercounts.

Those omissions mean that as much as 30% of the nation’s abortions may not be captured in the CDC data, according to officials at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights. The group conducts a more comprehensive survey of all U.S. abortion providers every three years, and its next report is due out next year.

Despite the CDC report’s limitations, it generally has painted a similar overall picture to what Guttmacher reports, said Rachel Jones, lead researcher on that project.

“Historically, the trends tend to be the same,” Jones said.

Overall, there were about 630,000 abortions reported to CDC in 2019. The abortion rate was 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. That year, 56% of the reported abortions were surgical and about 44% were through use of the so-called abortion pill.