National News

CDC Report Shows Continued Decline in U.S. Abortion Rate

November 27, 2018
Young people participate in the annual Walk for Life in San Diego Jan. 20. A report released Nov. 21 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fewer U.S. women are having abortions than at any time since Roe v. Wade. (CNS photo/David Maung)

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The abortion rate in the United States continues to decline, as do the number of abortions overall, according to a report issued Nov. 21 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The drop in both abortions overall and the abortion rate has declined each year for a decade.

According to the new report, the abortion rate in 2015 — the last year for which statistics are available — is at 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15-44. The rate has dropped eight of the past nine years since 2006’s rate of 15.9; the rate of 15.6 held steady in 2008.

The overall number of abortions also continued to slide. The 2015 number of reported abortions was 638,169, about one-fourth less than the 852,385 reported in 2006. It is down 2 percent from 2014’s figure of 652,639.

Over the past decade, the ratio of abortions to live births has also trended downward. The radio rose slightly from 2007 to 2008, and held steady in 2019 and 2010, but has declined from 2006’s 233 abortions per 1,000 live births to 2015’s 188 abortions per 1,000 live births.

The number of legal abortions in the United States peaked in the 1980s before beginning a slow but steady decline, interrupted only by the slight rise in, or holding steady of, numbers in the late 2000s.

The CDC’s numbers are not complete. They do not include California, Florida, Maryland, New Hampshire and Wyoming because they either “did not report, did not report by age, or did not meet reporting standards,” the CDC report said.

The abortion rate is highest for women in their 20s. Women ages 20-24 had an abortion rate of 19.9, and women ages 25-29 had an abortion rate of 17.9 per 1,000 women in their age group. Together, they accounted for close to 60 percent of all abortions.

White women had an abortion rate close to one-fourth that of black women. White women accounted for an abortion rate of 6.8, while black women had an abortion rate of 25.1. The CDC report, though, noted that abortion rates, ratios and numbers have gone down among all racial and ethnic groups.