There are two basic sources on abortion incidence in the United States: • The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publishes yearly, but relies on voluntary reports from state health departments (and New York City, Washington, D.C.). It has been missing data from California, New Hampshire, and at least one other state since 1998. • The Guttmacher Institute (GI) contacts abortion clinics directly for data but does not survey every year. • Because it surveys clinics directly and includes data from all fifty states, most researchers believe Guttmacher’s numbers to be more reliable, though Guttmacher still believes there may be as much as a 5% undercount in its most recent figures. Both the CDC and Guttmacher show significant recent drops and even larger drops over the last 25 years. • Total abortions dropped 27.8% from 1998 to 2015 with the CDC, and fell 42.4% from 1990 to 2014 with GI. • Total abortions fell below 1 million for the first time in 38 years for Guttmacher when it reported 958,700 for 2013. That dropped further to 926,190 in 2014. • The abortion rate for 2014 for GI was 14.6 abortions for every 1,000 women of reproductive age (15-44), half what it was in 1981 (29.3) and the lowest recorded since abortion was legalized in the U.S. in 1973. • Guttmacher says there were 18.8 abortions for every 100 pregnancies ending in live birth or abortion in 2014, an abortion ratio lower than any since 1972. • Guttmacher says that the number of abortion “providers” has dropped from a high of 2,918 in 1982 to 1,671 in 2014. • Most of the reduction in abortions seen between 2008 and 2011 was in facilities performing a thousand or more abortions a year. A loss of 65 more such facilities from 2011 to 2014 was likely a big factor in the overall drop of 132,300 abortions seen in those three years.
