CDC Releases Its Annual 'Abortion Surveillance' Report

Today, the CDC released its Abortion Surveillance report for 2006. Every year, since 1969, the CDC conducts this “abortion surveillance” to “document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions in the United States.” The information is obtained from abortion data the CDC requests from 50 central health agencies in all fifty states plus Washington DC and New York City.

 

The report provides critical information on how many abortions are performed in this country, at what gestational age, and with what medical procedure but also about who gets abortions in this country: broken down by age, ethnicity and race. 

According to the report, for 2006, a total of 846,181 abortions were reported to CDC. From that number, researchers found that the abortion rate was 16.1 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years, and the abortion ratio was 236 abortions per 1,000 live births. During the previous decade (1997--2006), reported abortion numbers, rates, and ratios decreased 5.7%, 8.8%, and 14.8%, respectively. However, most of these declines occurred before 2001.

In fact, from 1996-2000, the report finds that the number of abortions decreased 20,605 per year, the abortion rate decreased 0.5 abortions per 1,000 women per year, and the abortion ratio decreased 9.7 abortions per 1,000 live births per year. Reductions were much smaller on average during 2001--2006; the number of abortions declined 2,163 per year, the abortion rate declined 0.1 per year, and the abortion ratio declined 3.3 per year.

The greatest increase could be seen from 2005-2006 when the total number of abortions increased 3.1%, and the abortion rate increased 3.2%; the abortion ratio was stable. Thee numbers seem to coincide with the increase in the number of live births as well as the fertility rate, both of which increased by 3% in 2006, “constituting the largest single-year increase in more than 15 years. For this reason, the increase in the total number and rate of abortions for 2006 might reflect a general increase in the number of pregnancies of all outcomes (fetal losses, induced abortions, and live births).”

The overall decrease in abortion numbers could be due to a variety of factors, the report notes, including a “decline in the availability of abortion providers; the adoption of  legislative restrictions and barriers to abortion services like mandatory waiting periods and parental involvement laws; and increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing” among other reasons.

Other findings include:

• 62% of abortions were done before eight weeks gestation. This percentage increased almost 11% since 1997.  And the percentage of abortions done before six weeks gestation increased a whopping 66.3%. This can, in part, be attributed to the rise in the availability of medication abortion (RU-486 or “the abortion pill”)
• 5% of abortions were done after sixteen weeks gestation; of those, only 1.3% of abortions were done at 21 weeks gestation or later.
• Almost 30% of abortions were done earlier than 6 weeks gestation
• Adolescent abortion rates increased during 2005--2006 after several years of decline.
• Women ages 20-29 years old account for the majority of abortions at 56.8%
• In 2005, the most recent year for which data were available, seven women were reported to have died as a result of complications from known legal induced abortions.

 

Some of what is noteworthy about the above:

• Women are having abortions earlier in their pregnancies when the risk of complication is lowest and the procedure is the safest.
• Very few abortions are recorded for women in later stages of pregnancy, 16-20 weeks or later, despite what anti-choice advocates attempt to convey.
• While it is a tragedy when a woman dies from a legal abortion, according to the report, the annual number of deaths associated with known, legal abortions was more than two-thirds lower on average in the early 2000s than it was in the early 1970s.

I want to note what the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Reproductive Health surmises from its own numbers and analysis:

Providing women with the knowledge and resources necessary to make decisions about their sexual behavior and use of contraception can help women avoid unintended pregnancies and thus reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States.

Let’s be clear. The majority (if not all) of the leading anti-choice advocacy organizations from Focus on the Family to the Family Research Council do not support increased access to contraception or family planning. They do not advocate for the use of or expanded access to contraception for women in the United States, as a critical women’s health tool or as a means to decrease the abortion rate. In fact, there is active opposition to the use of contraception. In an op-ed on the Family Research Council web site, from April 2009, titled “The Myth of the Contraceptive Compromise”, Cathy and Austin Ruse write, “Let's try contraception to end abortion? Please.”

Crisis Pregnancy Centers, most often created and run as an outreach arm of a faith-based, anti-choice organization, do not provide medical care and so do not provide family planning or contraception services to pregnant clients. Instead, they repeat falsities and lies claiming that birth control methods like the pill or emergency contraception (Plan B) cause abortions.

If there is anything we can take from reports like these it is that an increased focus on ensuring that all women in this country have access to the education and tools necessary to prevent unintended pregnancy should be accessible health care for  all women of reproductive health age.