Abortion statistics in the United States

Both the Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regularly report abortion statistics in the United States. They use different methodologies, so they report somewhat different abortion rates, but they show similar trends. The Guttmacher Institute attempts to contact every abortion provider. The CDC relies on voluntary reporting of abortion data from the states and the District of Columbia. As of July 2022, the Guttmacher Institute had reported abortion data for the years 1973 through 2020 and the CDC had reported abortion data for the years 1970 through 2019. Abortion statistics are commonly presented as the number of abortions, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44), and the abortion ratio. The Guttmacher Institute defines the abortion ratio as the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies ending in an abortion or a live birth, excluding miscarriages, and the CDC defines it as the number of abortions per 1,000 live births. The figures reported by both organizations include only the legal induced abortions conducted by clinics, hospitals or physicians' offices, or that make use of abortion pills dispensed from certified facilities such as clinics or physicians' offices. They do not account for the use of abortion pills that were obtained outside of clinical settings.