How Many Babies Have Been Aborted Since 1973?

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It'southward been almost 49 years since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973. And in the one-half-century since abortion became a constitutional right, a lot has inverse. Clinics have closed, restrictions have mounted and abortion has become one of the most polarizing issues in American politics. At the aforementioned time, women are receiving far fewer abortions than they were in the past.

But something else has changed, too: the women who are seeking abortions.

According to our analysis of data from the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, a research system that supports abortion rights, the profile of women who receive abortions has changed in important ways since 1973.¹ Some of those shifts reverberate wider changes in the state's population, but others cut confronting long-held stereotypes nigh abortion.

For instance, in the years afterwards Roe v. Wade, the ballgame rate spiked — but then it began to autumn.

One obvious explanation for this trend is that state-level ballgame restrictions started to ramp up in the 1990s and rose to a fever pitch later Republicans swept state legislatures in 2010 and began passing a barrage of anti-abortion legislation. Researchers who study ballgame say that increases in contraceptive access — particularly long-acting contraceptives, like IUDs — are about certainly contributing as well, by reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies.

But fifty-fifty though fewer women are relying on ballgame, hundreds of thousands of pregnancies are even so terminated every year. And as the number of abortions has shrunk, the population of women who receive abortions has grown less vulnerable in some means — but much more than vulnerable in others.

One of the most hit changes following Roe has been the dramatic decline in the share of abortion patients who are teenagers. This is one trend that doesn't have much to do with abortion restrictions, either. Information technology's mainly that fewer teens are getting pregnant in the first identify, while the population of women who get abortions is now skewing older.

The dramatic drop in the share of teen abortions isn't an isolated occurrence — teen pregnancies and births accept declined essentially over the past few decades. Both trends have a similar caption, though. "Information technology seems to be due to improved contraceptive employ amidst adolescents," said Rachel Jones, a researcher at the Guttmacher Plant. And information technology is likely also related to the fact that teenagers are only having less sex than they used to.

Although abortions are now tilted more than toward older patients, the women who do cull to end their pregnancies are increasingly probable to exist lower-income. The CDC doesn't collect data nearly ballgame patients' income, and then our ability to runway this trend is more limited, only two decades of surveys past the Guttmacher Found show a clear uptick in the share of abortion patients who are poor.

Role of this trend is probable due to growing economic inequality in the U.S.; there are more lower-income women now, so it makes sense they would take up a larger share. Just there are lots of other reasons why poorer women would be increasingly likely to seek an abortion. For 1 matter, although the Affordable Care Human action did make birth control more affordable, information technology's still not as attainable for poor women. Non coincidentally, poorer women are also more likely to experience unintended pregnancies. Moreover, poverty itself is as well a reason why many women end pregnancies; many abortion patients say that they're ending their pregnancy simply because they tin can't afford some other child.

This is ane reason why abortion restrictions are so difficult for women to navigate. State-imposed hurdles aren't only inconvenient — they're plush. Ballgame is rarely covered past insurance, due to a web of state and federal restrictions. Considering of this, women who might have already struggled to afford an abortion may also have to lose work hours or travel longer distances in parts of the country where at that place are few ballgame clinics and/or states require multiple visits.

Why the Supreme Court almost overturned Roe v. Wade 30 years ago — but didn't

Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury Higher who studies reproductive policies, said that the fact that it is often poorer women who get an abortion contributes to a lack of awareness virtually merely how difficult it is to get an abortion in the U.S. right now. "As [ballgame] is concentrated among this grouping of poor and low-income women, the rest of us maybe become more distant from information technology," she said. And every bit a result, she added, it may be harder for most Americans to empathise with how hard it is for many women who want an abortion to become 1.

Given that lower-income women are besides disproportionately likely to be women of color, the racial makeup of women who get abortions has also changed a lot. When abortion became nationally legal in 1973, virtually women who received abortions were white. At present, that share has decreased essentially.

1 caption for this trend is simple: Since the 1970s, the U.S. as a whole has gotten much more than diverse. But it's also reflective of the broader inequities that people of color face in all kinds of areas, including health care. The median wealth of white households is besides much higher than the median wealth of Black and Hispanic households, and Blackness and Hispanic youth may be less likely to receive comprehensive sex teaching or accept access to highly constructive birth command. Additionally, women of color are generally more than probable to have unintended pregnancies.

Other broad changes in American society have affected who gets abortions. Nigh women who have abortions are unmarried, and that's been consistently truthful since abortion became legal. But according to the CDC, the share of married women who receive abortions has declined past nearly half.

This makes sense, because that Americans are much less likely to exist married than they were fifty years ago. But it does mean that married women are underrepresented among people who take abortions, and unmarried women are overrepresented.

Being single can mean a lot of things, though. Guttmacher'south 2014 survey of ballgame patients helps fill in the moving picture a little more than. Nearly 31 percent of abortion patients in that survey were living with a partner; simply over half weren't living with a partner when they became pregnant. So while unmarried women are increasingly likely to have abortions, the shift isn't as dramatic as it appears.

The political conversation most abortion in the U.Due south. often focuses on abortions performed later in pregnancy, but over fourth dimension, almost abortions have been happening earlier and earlier in pregnancy. Myers told us that's for two reasons. "First, women accept increased access to highly sensitive at-habitation pregnancy tests that make it easier for women to detect sooner that they're pregnant," she said.

The second reason is the introduction of medication abortion pills, which can be taken through most of the first trimester. "Information technology makes ballgame more accessible and as well gives women an incentive to get it sooner," Myers said.

In 2019, about four in ten abortions happened at vi weeks of pregnancy or earlier, according to the CDC, and more than 90 percent of abortions happened in the starting time trimester.

Meanwhile, second-trimester abortions — which were never very mutual — are happening even less often. In 1973, about 15 per centum of abortions happened after 12 weeks, but the share that happened after 13 weeks was only 7 percentage in 2019. I matter has been consistent over time, though — despite taking upward an enormous amount of political oxygen — is that abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy have e'er been exceedingly rare.

The fact that many abortions are happening in the primeval weeks of pregnancy helps explain why highly restrictive abortion laws, like a ban on abortion after nearly vi weeks of pregnancy, which has been in place in Texas since September, haven't completely stopped women from getting abortions. Most abortions these days, however, still happen afterwards six weeks every bit some women don't even know they're pregnant at that indicate. And just considering before abortions are nevertheless possible, that doesn't make them piece of cake. This is one reason why Texas's constabulary places an onerous burden on women, especially if they're struggling to find money to pay for the procedure or go to a clinic.

Practise yous accept a story about your experience with abortion to help inform our coverage? Please consider filling out our class — nosotros may follow up with you to learn more.

Footnotes

1. We collected CDC data from its yearly abortion surveillance reports, using figures logged for each private year; we did non depict from the 10-twelvemonth tables included in some reports. The information backside these trends isn't perfect. For instance, the CDC's numbers are based on reports from the states, and those reports are patchy and incomplete. Guttmacher's information, meanwhile, covers a shorter span of fourth dimension than the CDC'due south, then it'southward harder to identify long-term trends. Simply overall, the trends we found betwixt the two sources are consequent — which suggests that, in full general, the numbers are capturing real changes in who gets an abortion and how.

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux is a senior author for FiveThirtyEight. @ameliatd

Anna Wiederkehr is a senior visual journalist for FiveThirtyEight. @wiederkehra

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Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-abortion-has-changed-since-1973/

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