#BreakingNews New Research shows Abortions Declining in the USA to its lowest rate since legalization in 1973


 The Guttmacher Institute releases latest findings, showing that abortion has decreased:

Between 2011 and 2014, the U.S. abortion rate declined from 16.9 to 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44, the lowest rate ever recorded and the continuation of a decades-long trend.1  

KEY POINTS

  • This study used new data from the Guttmacher Institute to examine trends in abortion incidence and rates between 2014 and 2017. In addition, we examined changes in the number of health care facilities that provide abortions.
  • In 2017, an estimated 862,320 abortions were provided in clinical settings in the United States, representing a 7% decline since 2014 and the continuation of a long-term trend.
  • The U.S. abortion rate dropped to 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 2017, the lowest rate recorded since abortion was legalized in 1973. Abortion rates fell in most states and in all four regions of the country.
  •  A total of 339,640 medication abortions occurred in 2017—about 39% of all abortions.
  • As in previous years, clinics provided the overwhelming majority of U.S. abortions (95%), while private physicians’ offices and hospitals accounted for 5%.
  • In 2017, 808 clinic facilities provided abortions, a 2% increase from 2014. However, regional and state disparities in clinic availability grew more pronounced; the number of clinics increased in the Northeast and the West, by 16% and 4% respectively, and decreased in the Midwest and the South, by 6% and 9%, respectively.
  • Although the number of state abortion restrictions continued to increase in the Midwest and South between 2014 and 2017, these restrictive policies do not appear to have been the primary driver of declining abortion rates. There was also no consistent relationship between increases or decreases in clinic numbers and changes in state abortion rates. 
  • Fertility rates declined in almost all states between 2014 and 2017, and it is unlikely that the decline in abortion was due to an increase in unintended births.
  • Factors that may have contributed to the decline in abortion were improvements in contraceptive use and increases in the number of individuals relying on self-managed abortions outside of a clinical setting.
  • Excerpt from Source : https://www.guttmacher.org/report/abortion-incidence-service-availability-us-2017

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