On November 27, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its newest abortion report, showing that in 2022, abortions dropped by 2% — from 625,978 reported by the CDC in 2021 to 613,383 abortions reported in 2022 (a decrease of nearly 12,600 abortions).
Abortion data published by the CDC typically show far fewer abortions than amounts generally published by the Guttmacher Institute, which has historically not published data on an annual basis. The CDC noted that reporting of abortion data is “voluntary,” and that while “most states and jurisdictions” require abortion data to be submitted by hospitals, physicians, and others, this “reporting is not complete in all areas, including in certain areas with reporting requirements.”
This means that “the level of detail reported to CDC might vary from year to year and by reporting area,” and can sometimes make annual comparisons challenging. Comparisons over time were assembled from data from “the 47 reporting areas that reported each year during 2013–2022 (46 states and New York City),” according to the CDC.
CDC abortion data 2013-2022
The CDC report for 2022 included only “legal induced abortions” which were “provided voluntarily to the CDC by the central health agencies of 48 reporting areas (46 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City, excluding California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.” The CDC defined a “legal abortion” as one “performed by a licensed clinician within the limits of state or jurisdiction law.”
Tragically, abortion-related deaths climbed to nearly a dozen women over two years of reports (2020 and 2021). Data for 2022-2023 is not yet available. These numbers will likely not receive the same media attention as the deaths of women in pro-life states, dishonestly attributed to pro-life laws.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In 2022, 613,383 abortions were reported to the CDC from 48 reporting areas, a drop of just over two percent (2.01%) from the 625,978 recorded by the CDC in 2021.
- California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey did not report abortion data to the CDC. Reporting abortion data is voluntary.
- The CDC counted only “legal induced abortions” for 2022, which are defined as those “performed by a licensed clinician within the limits of state or jurisdiction law.”
- The abortion rate also dropped by 3% from 2021 to 2022.
- Women in various categories made up the majority of abortions in 2022 — women in their 20s, single women, women with a previous live birth, and Black women.
- Just over 12% of women obtaining abortions were married, while nearly 88% were unmarried, based on 36 reporting areas which collected this information.
- While 2022-23 figures are not yet available, the CDC shows that there were nearly a dozen abortion-related deaths of women in 2020 and 2021.
- According to 32 reporting areas, Black women accounted for nearly 40% of all abortions by race in 2022. Just under 12% of the population in the U.S. self-identified as Black in 2022.
Abortion numbers, rate, and ratio decreased
As previously stated, CDC figures show a 2% drop in number of abortions — from 625,978 reported by the CDC in 2021 to 613,383 abortions reported in 2022 (a decrease of nearly 12,600 abortions).
The CDC’s reported abortion rate for 2022 was 11.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years — a 3% decrease from 2021, down “from 11.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years” in 2021,” according to the CDC.
In addition, the abortion ratio decreased 2% (from 204 abortions per 1,000 live births).
The CDC noted:
From 2013 to 2022, the total number of reported abortions decreased 5% (from 640,154), the abortion rate decreased 10% (from 12.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years), and the abortion ratio increased 1% (from 198 abortions per 1,000 live births).
According to Charlotte Lozier Institute Associate Scholar Dr. Michael New, “This is the first time the CDC has released data on the incidence of abortion post-Dobbs.” He added that “Abortions fell in states that passed strong pro-life laws & increased elsewhere. [Fifteen] states had either a heartbeat act or an abortion ban in place for more than a month. Abortions fell in all 15 states. Abortions increased in 28 of the other 33 states reporting data.”
Additionally, “Some states saw abortions increase dramatically due to out-of-state travel,” and “The number of abortions performed in New Mexico more than doubled Abortions increased in Kansas by more than 50%. Abortions increased in CO, DE, MN, NV, NC, and WA by more than 20%,” according to Dr. New.
(1/5) The @CDCgov just released new abortion data for 2022. This is the first time the CDC has released data on the incidence of abortion post-Dobbs.
The upward trend in abortions stopped in 2022
The number of abortions fell by 2%
The abortion rate fell by 3%— Michael New (@Michael_J_New) November 27, 2024
Who had the most abortions?
Women in their twenties, single women, women with a previous live birth, and Black women made up the majority of abortions in the various categories for 2022.
Women in their twenties made up more than half of abortions (56.5%) in 2022, according to the CDC, accounting for 335,557 abortions reported by “48 reporting areas; excludes four reporting areas (California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey) that did not report, did not report by age, or did not meet reporting standards.”
The CDC noted that “adolescents aged <15 years and women aged ≥40 years accounted for the lowest percentages of abortions (0.2% and 3.6%, respectively) and had the lowest abortion rates (0.4 and 2.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged <15 and ≥40 years, respectively.”
“Abortion rates decreased from 2013 to 2022 among all age groups, except women aged 30–34 years for whom it increased,” wrote the CDC. “For 2022, among the 36 areas that reported abortions by marital status, 12.3% of women who obtained an abortion were married, and 87.7% were unmarried.”
Sadly, according to the CDC, the abortion ratio (abortions per 1,000 live births) was more than 10 times higher for single women (376) than married women (37).
Nearly 60% of abortions (269,023 out of a total of 452,838 recorded from 41 reporting areas) in 2022 were reportedly committed on women who had experienced at least one previous live birth:
- 40.6% (183,815) — zero previous live births
- 24.1% (109,036) — one previous live birth
- 19.5% (88,089) — two previous live births
- 9.4% (42,548) — three previous live births
- 6.5% (29,350) — four or more previous live births
Black women continue to account for most abortions by race
Black women again made up the highest percentages, rate, and ratio of all abortions from 32 areas which reported on abortions by race or ethnicity in 2022. Of abortions recorded in the 32 reporting areas to the CDC by race or ethnicity in 2022:
- Black women — 39.5% of abortions (134,308)
- White women — 31.9% of abortions (108,642)
- Hispanic women — 21.2% of abortions (72,241)
- Other races — 7.3% of abortions (24,932)
According to 2022 data, 11.7% of the population in the United States is Black. Live Action News will analyze abortions by race and ethnicity more thoroughly in a separate article.
Why abortion statistics are so vastly different
As previously reported at Live Action News, abortion data has traditionally been compiled by the Guttmacher Institute (a former Planned Parenthood “special affiliate”) and the CDC. As noted:
In 1969, years prior to Roe v. Wade, the CDC began an abortion surveillance branch to document the number and characteristics of legally obtained abortions. To date, the CDC relies solely on data voluntarily reported from the states, which individually set the standards for abortion reporting.
Currently, not all states report abortion statistics, and since the Dobbs decision in 2022, some states (Michigan, Minnesota) are planning to either stop reporting or scale back what data they publish. Therefore, there are large disparities in abortion data state by state. Some states require no reporting whatsoever, and others collect a variety of data on age, race, gender, gestation, complications, and other categories. As such, Guttmacher’s overall numbers tend to be more comprehensive.
Abortion numbers had been ticking upward since 2017. In 2020, the Guttmacher Institute recorded 930,160 abortions committed nationally — an increase of 67,840 over 2017.In May of 2024,Guttmacher updated its total abortion number for the year 2023, writing, “Monthly Abortion Provision Study show that an estimated 1,037,000 abortions occurred in the formal health care system in 2023.”
CDC’s abortion pill data is a year behind Guttmacher data
For 2022, the CDC reported that the abortion pill made up 53.3% of all reported abortions from the 47 areas reporting by method type which included chemical abortion (abortion pills) on their reporting form (548,196). This is much less than the 642,700 chemical (abortion pill) abortions recorded by Guttmacher for 2023, estimated to account for 63% of abortions which took place inside the “formal health care system” in that year.
The CDC data is a year behind that of Guttmacher.
2022 CDC data revealed:
- 53.3% of abortions were early chemical abortions (a nonsurgical abortion at ≤9 weeks’ gestation).
- 35.5% were surgical abortions at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.
- 6.9% were surgical abortions at >13 weeks’ gestation, and
- 4.3% were chemical abortions at >9 weeks’ gestation.
In addition, according to the CDC, “other methods, including intrauterine instillation and hysterectomy or hysterotomy, were rare (<0.1%)” — but apparently not non-existent.
Live Action News will look more closely at abortions by gestation in a later analysis.
Deaths related to legal abortion
The latest data from the CDC for 2022 recorded five abortion-related deaths from legally induced abortions in 2021. The CDC is admittedly a year behind in publishing these numbers. Tragically, previous data from the CDC published in 2021 recorded six abortion-related deaths of women for 2020.
Deaths related to legal abortion, 1973-2021 (CDC)
The CDC defines an abortion-related death as “a death resulting from a direct complication of an abortion (legal or illegal), an indirect complication caused by a chain of events initiated by an abortion, or an aggravation of a pre-existing condition by the physiologic effects of abortion.” The CDC again noted that “An abortion is categorized as legal when it is performed by a licensed clinician within the limits of state or jurisdiction law.”
The number of published abortion-related deaths has now reached 465 — all deaths from legal abortion recorded by the CDC between 1973 and 2021 — with additional amounts reportedly dying from illegal abortions.
Call on President Trump to pardon the FACE Act prisoners on his first day in office.
