CDC abortion data:
An agency of the federal government, the Division of Reproductive Health of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has collected legal abortion data since 1969. They receive information from 52 reporting areas -- the 50 states, the District of Columbia, & New York City. They issue an annual Abortion Surveillance report.
The CDC defines a legal induced abortion as "a procedure, performed by a licensed physician or someone acting under the supervision of a licensed physician, that was intended to terminate a suspected or known intrauterine pregnancy and to produce a nonviable fetus at any gestational age."
The CDC typically issues their report in the middle of each year, to cover data three or four years previously. For example, they issued a report for 1996 in 1999-JUL-30.
Recent CDC data from 1996 to 2007 (200x left out for table size reasons):
Item |
1996 |
1998 |
2002 |
2005 |
2007 |
Total Abortions 1 |
1,222K |
885K |
854K |
820K |
827K |
Live Births1 |
3,892K |
3,352K |
3472K |
4138K |
5173K |
Ratio A/1000Live |
314 |
264 |
246 |
198 |
160 |
Rate/1000 women |
20 |
17 |
14 |
13.5 |
12 |
% unmarried |
80.4 |
81.1 |
82 |
83 |
83 |
% under age 20 |
20.3 |
19.8 |
18 |
17.1 |
32 |
% aged 20-24 |
31.8 |
31.8 |
33 |
32.8 |
32.5 |
% under 9 weeks |
54.6 |
55.7 |
63 |
61 |
79 |
% under 13 weeks |
88 |
88.1 |
88.0 |
83 |
92.8 |
% over 20 weeks |
1.5 |
1.4 |
1.4 |
1.4 |
1.2 |
Number of deaths |
9 |
10 |
9 |
 7 |
6 |
Abortions age<15 |
|
|
5,205 |
|
2,074 |
Notes for the above table:
1. K= thousands.
2. Abortion ratio is the number of legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births.
3. Abortion rate is the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years.
4. These values were heavily influenced by missing data from Alaska, California, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.
Region
