According to fresh data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both the number and rate of abortions reported in the United States decreased by 2% between 2019 and 2020.
Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requests abortion data from all 50 states and other jurisdictions, including the District of Columbia and New York City, and researchers compare it to census and birth statistics.
The most recent findings were released on Wednesday. They show that in 2020, there were 615,911 abortions in 48 reporting locations that reported data every year from 2011 to 2020, a decrease from 625,346 in 2019.
From 2019 to 2020, the abortion rate in these areas declined from 11.4 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 to 11.2 per 1,000 women.
Between 2011 and 2020, the overall number of recorded abortions decreased by 15%, while the abortion rate decreased by 18%.
Overall, the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per live birth) fell from 2011 to 2020. However, it rose somewhat between 2019 and 2020, as overall births fell during the first year of the Covid-19 epidemic.
More than 80% of abortions performed in 2020 occurred at or before 9 weeks of gestation, and more than 93% occurred at or before 13 weeks.
In 2020, Missouri had the lowest abortion rate, at 0.1 per 1,000 women. DC had the highest rate, at 23 per 1,000 people. Women in their twenties accounted for more than half of all procedures performed that year, with adolescents under the age of 15 and women aged 40 and up had the lowest percentages of abortions, 0.2% and 3.7%, respectively.
In 2020, white and black women had the greatest abortion rates, with 32.7% and 39.2%, respectively. Approximately 13.7% of women who had abortions were married.
The CDC also found four abortion-related deaths in 2019, the most recent year for which data was available. All of them have anything to do with legal abortions.
The researchers stated that the Covid-19 pandemic may have had an impact on the figures, such as clinic closures and changes in practice. There could possibly have been changes in pregnancy rates as a result of decreased sexual engagement.
