An estimated 73 million induced abortions occur worldwide each year, based on comprehensive modeling published in The Lancet Global Health covering data through 2019. That translates to roughly 39 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15 to 49) annually. To put it another way, about 29% of all pregnancies globally end in induced abortion.
How the Global Number Is Estimated
No country has a perfect count of every abortion that takes place within its borders. Many abortions happen outside formal healthcare systems, go unreported, or occur in settings where record-keeping is limited. Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization use a combination of national health surveys, official statistics, pharmaceutical sales data (particularly for abortion medications), and statistical modeling to arrive at global estimates. The most widely cited figure of 73.3 million per year (with a range of 66.7 to 82.0 million) comes from this kind of modeling and represents the best available picture of global abortion incidence.
What Drives These Numbers
The single biggest driver behind the global abortion count is unintended pregnancy. About 61% of all unintended pregnancies end in abortion. Factors that increase unintended pregnancy, such as limited access to effective contraception, inconsistent contraceptive use, and lack of comprehensive sex education, are directly linked to higher abortion rates in a given population. In regions where modern contraception is widely available and used consistently, both unintended pregnancy rates and abortion rates tend to be lower.
Abortion Rates by Legal Status
One of the most striking findings in global abortion research is that restricting abortion by law does not clearly reduce how often it happens. A Guttmacher Institute analysis reported in The BMJ found that the abortion rate in countries where the procedure is banned or allowed only to save a woman’s life is 37 per 1,000 women. In countries where abortion is broadly legal, the rate is 34 per 1,000 women. The difference is not statistically meaningful.
What does change dramatically is safety. In countries with restrictive laws, a much larger share of abortions are performed under unsafe conditions, by untrained providers, or using dangerous methods. In countries with legal access, the vast majority of abortions are performed by trained professionals or with approved medications under medical guidance. Legal status, in other words, shapes how abortions happen far more than whether they happen.
Regional Differences
Abortion rates vary widely across world regions. Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South and Central Asia tend to have higher rates per 1,000 women. These are also regions where access to modern contraception is more uneven and where many abortions take place outside formal healthcare settings. Northern Europe and North America generally have lower rates, which researchers attribute largely to widespread contraceptive access and use.
Income plays a role at the country level as well. Low- and middle-income countries account for a disproportionate share of global abortions, in part because they have larger populations of reproductive-age women and in part because unintended pregnancy rates are higher where contraceptive access is limited. The gap is not about cultural attitudes toward abortion so much as about access to the tools that prevent unintended pregnancy in the first place.
Trends Over Time
The global abortion rate dipped slightly between the early 1990s and the early 2000s, then climbed back to roughly where it had been. Between 1990 and 2019, the overall rate has remained relatively stable at around 36 to 40 per 1,000 women, depending on the time window. The slight decline in the early 2000s coincided with expanded access to modern contraception in several large countries, but that progress stalled in many regions, and the rate returned to 1990s levels.
What has shifted more noticeably is how abortions are performed. The availability of medication-based abortion (pills rather than surgical procedures) has expanded dramatically since the early 2000s, particularly in low-resource settings. This has made self-managed abortion safer in many parts of the world, even in places where legal access remains restricted.
The Safety Gap
Not all 73 million annual abortions carry the same health risks. The World Health Organization classifies a significant portion of global abortions as “unsafe,” meaning they are carried out by people lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not meet minimum medical standards, or both. Unsafe abortions are concentrated in low-income countries and in regions with the most restrictive abortion laws. They contribute to tens of thousands of maternal deaths each year and cause millions of additional complications requiring emergency medical care, including severe bleeding, infection, and organ damage.
Safe abortion, by contrast, is one of the simplest and most common medical procedures when performed with proper training or approved medications. The risk of serious complications from a safe, legal abortion is extremely low, comparable to the risk from common outpatient procedures.