Approximately 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year, while roughly 73 million take place worldwide. The exact U.S. number depends on which data source you use, since no single system captures every abortion. The CDC reported 613,383 abortions in 2022 from 48 reporting areas, but that figure is an undercount because not all states report to the CDC. The Guttmacher Institute, which surveys abortion providers directly, estimated roughly 1 million abortions in 2023.
U.S. Numbers: Why Two Estimates Exist
Two organizations track U.S. abortion data, and they consistently produce different totals. The CDC relies on voluntary reporting from state health departments, and some states (notably California, the most populous state in the country) do not submit data. For 2022, the CDC’s count was 613,383 abortions across 48 reporting areas, with an abortion rate of 11.2 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
The Guttmacher Institute contacts clinics and providers directly, which captures abortions in states that don’t report to the CDC. Guttmacher’s figures are generally considered more complete. Their data showed approximately 642,700 medication abortions alone in 2023, representing 63% of all U.S. abortions that year. That means the total from all methods was over 1 million.
Global Abortion Numbers
The World Health Organization estimates that around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year. Nearly half of those, about 45%, are classified as unsafe, meaning they are carried out by someone without proper training or in an environment that doesn’t meet basic medical standards. Unsafe abortions are concentrated in countries where the procedure is heavily restricted or where healthcare infrastructure is limited.
When Most Abortions Happen
The vast majority of abortions in the U.S. take place early in pregnancy. In 2021, 80.8% occurred at or before 9 weeks of gestation, and 93.5% were performed by 13 weeks. Nearly half, 44.8%, happened at 6 weeks or earlier.
Later abortions are uncommon. Procedures at 14 to 20 weeks accounted for 5.7% of the total, and those at 21 weeks or later made up just 0.9%. Later abortions often involve serious fetal diagnoses or medical complications that aren’t detected until further along in pregnancy.
Medication Abortion Is Now the Most Common Method
A major shift has occurred in how abortions are provided. Medication abortion, which uses a two-pill regimen to end a pregnancy in the first 10 to 12 weeks, accounted for 63% of all U.S. abortions in 2023. That’s up from 53% in 2020. The rise is partly driven by the expansion of telehealth prescribing, which allows patients to receive pills by mail without an in-person clinic visit. In states where clinic access has become more difficult, this shift has been especially pronounced.
Who Gets Abortions in the U.S.
CDC surveillance data from 2021 provides a demographic snapshot. Women in their 20s accounted for more than half of all abortions (57%), split roughly evenly between the 20-to-24 and 25-to-29 age groups. Teenagers under 15 made up just 0.2% of abortions, and women 40 and older accounted for 3.6%.
Among the 33 reporting areas that tracked race and ethnicity, non-Hispanic Black women accounted for 41.5% of abortions, non-Hispanic White women for 30.2%, and Hispanic women for 21.8%. These figures reflect disparities in contraceptive access, income, and insurance coverage rather than differences in pregnancy intention.
About 60% of people who have abortions are already parents. In 2021, 39.3% of abortion patients had no previous live births, while 24.3% had one child, 20% had two, and 16.4% had three or more. The CDC does not collect income or education data through its surveillance system, but separate surveys from Guttmacher have consistently found that the majority of abortion patients have incomes below the federal poverty level.
How the Dobbs Decision Reshaped Access
The Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, triggered abortion bans or severe restrictions in more than a dozen states. The Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount project has tracked monthly abortion volumes by state since April 2022 to measure these shifts.
States with bans saw their abortion counts drop to zero or near zero, while neighboring states that kept abortion legal absorbed much of the demand. Illinois, New Mexico, Kansas, and North Carolina all saw significant increases in patients traveling from states with bans. Nationally, the total number of abortions did not decrease after Dobbs. It actually increased slightly, driven partly by the continued expansion of medication abortion and telehealth access. The geographic distribution of where those abortions happen, however, changed dramatically.
Long-Term Trends in the U.S.
The U.S. abortion rate peaked in the early 1980s at roughly 29 per 1,000 women of reproductive age. It declined steadily for decades, reaching a historic low of about 11 per 1,000 by the late 2010s. That long decline is attributed primarily to better access to effective contraception, including long-acting methods like IUDs and implants, rather than to legal restrictions.
The rate stabilized and then ticked upward in the early 2020s. For 2022, the CDC reported a rate of 11.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 and an abortion ratio of 199 abortions per 1,000 live births. Whether the post-Dobbs landscape will push the national rate down over time or simply redistribute where abortions occur remains an open question that ongoing data collection is working to answer.