The CDC reports 630,000 legal abortions done in 2019.
Abortion is a center stage issue in American politics. It might be useful to have some facts.
Today's post is a summary and highlights of the annual report on abortion statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A link to it is at the end of this post. The report is dense and is presented as narrative and tables, not as graphs. I round the data a little, so that readers have an easier time seeing the broad outlines. For example, the precise number the CDC reported was 629,898.
1. One out of six pregnancies in the USA is terminated. The abortion rate was 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women 15-44 years of age. For comparison, there were 195 abortions per 1,000 live births in that broad group.
2. Abortions are declining in absolute numbers over the past decade, from 766,000 in 2010 to the 630,000 in 2019. The rate is the number of abortions per 1,000 people. The ratio is the number of abortions per live birth. Both rate and ratio are declining as well.
3. Women in their 20s are the primary group obtaining abortions. The age groups 20-24 are 28% of the total and women 25-29 make up 29%. Teens make up 9%; women 30-35 make up 19%; women 35-40 make up 11%
4. Women at the extreme ends of the age spectrum are outliers. The oldest women, 40 and above, were only 4% of the total abortions, and had an abortion rate of only 3%. The youngest girls, under age 15, had 0.4 abortions per 1,000 girls age their age, but the highest abortion ratio of 853 abortions per 1,000 live births. Few girls under age 15 get pregnant, but when they do, 46% of pregnancies are terminated.
5. Teen girls abort most frequently. Among older teens, the abortion ratio drops to less than half of that of the under-15 group, down to 344, 358, and 294 abortions per 1,000 live births among 17, 18, and 19 year olds. However, this is still three times the average for all women of childbearing age.
6. There is substantial difference in abortion rates among different ethnicities. Non-Hispanic White women and Non-Hispanic Black women obtain most of the abortions, 33% and 38% respectively. Non-Hispanic White women had an abortion rate of 6.6 per 1,000 women and 117 per 1,000 live births. Non-Hispanic Black women had an abortion rate of 23.8 per 1,000 women, and a ratio of 386 abortions per 1,000 live births--nearly four times the abortion rate of White women.
7. Most abortions happen early in a pregnancy, with 92.7% taking place at or before the 13th week of pregnancy, measured from the time of the last period; 79.3% take place at or before the 9th week of pregnancy.
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| Chart by Kevin Drum: https://jabberwocking.com |
8. Early abortions are primarily "medical," i.e. done with a two-pill procedure that results in what most women experience as a "heavy period" with some cramping. Surgical abortions are 52% of abortions at 7-9 weeks gestation, 93% of abortions at 10-13 weeks, and 97-99% of those done after 14 weeks.
9. Adolescents delay abortions compared with other age groups. About 95% of abortions happen by the 14th week, but 20% of adolescents under 15 and 10% of 15-19 year-olds obtain an abortion after the 13th week. Only about 7% of older women waited that long. There was little difference between racial/ethnic groups on timing of the abortion.
10. There is little mortality from legal, induced abortions, with a rate of 0.41 per 100,000 abortions.
11, Women travel to get abortions. There are substantial differences among the states shown by the abortion rates per 1,000 women. Some states have low numbers. Wyoming's is 0.3 and Missouri's is 1.2 per 1,000 women, but Missouri's neighbor, Kansas, reports a rate of 12.3 per 1,000 women. Out-of-state women constitute 49% of the abortions done in Kansas. The District of Columbia is an outlier with 24 abortions per 1,000 women, but 69% of those are from out-of-state women. Nearby West Virginia's rate is 3.8 per 1,000 women.
12. Abortions are primarily done by single women; 14.5% of abortions were done for married women; 85.5 for unmarried. The ratio was 46 abortions per 1,000 live births for married women and 395 abortions per 1,000 live births for unmarried women, an eight-fold difference.
I invite readers to consult the CDC webpages and accompanying tables:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm
7 comments:
It would be interesting to know why there are so many unwanted pregnancies when they can be so easily prevented.
99% reliable times 200 sex acts a year equals 2 per year. It would be more, except women are only fertile about 2 or 3 days a month, i.e. a tenth of the time.
But it is more because people are sloppy, and although IUDs are insert and forget, hormonal birth control requires some reliability and people aren't reliable. And some people have less than perfect reactions to hormonal birth control, so they go off it if they aren't having sex. People get pregnant for the same reason people have traffic accidents. Very low frequency things happen if one give it enough opportunities for failure.
Peter Sage
If a woman takes antibiotics while taking oral contraceptives she can become pregnant.
The data, while useful, don't include California.
For those who are against abortion, aren't you glad you have a choice?
Imagine what your life will be like when SCOTUS outlaws all birth control.
Do you see the drug advertisements on tv that mention side effects?
That's why.
Nothing in medicine is foolproof.
We need to keep abortion safe. Prohibition does not work.
Great info, but completely irrelevant to the actual issue. One could say the statistics minimize the societal significance of abortion, or just as easily be outraged.
As a society we made a wise compromise in 1974. How do I know? It satisfied virtually no one.
Control of women, not only their reproduction, but almost every aspect of their lives; their appearance, their safety, their opportunities, is central to the continued dominance of the patriarchy. It's an existential threat to it if women have autonomy. While progress has been made in many other areas, abortion is the bastion where resistance will continue until the influence of religion has been banished-the sooner the better.
If it weren't for the Supreme Court, we wouldn't be talking about this. Biden’s Supreme Court commission just released its report, which is unlikely to result in any changes. The court supposedly wants to be perceived as non-partisan. In that case, it needs to act non-partisan, but it doesn’t. What we need are term limits for the judges, and a non-partisan selection process.
This country needs term limits for judges and politicians.
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