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Reported abortions continue to decrease

By Cheryl Wetzstein
November 22, 2007

The number of state-reported abortions fell about 1 percent in 2004, continuing a downward trend that started 14 years earlier, a new federal report says.

A total of 839,226 abortions were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2004. This is 1.1 percent lower than the 848,136 abortions reported in 2003, the agency said yesterday in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The national abortion rate of 16 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 was unchanged. The abortion ratio, or abortions per 1,000 live births, dropped from 241 to 238.

The CDC said women who got abortions were most likely to be unmarried (80 percent), white (53 percent), or 25 or older (50 percent).

The vast majority of abortions for which gestational age of the unborn baby was known were performed early in the pregnancy: Sixty-one percent were performed at eight weeks or less gestation, and 88 percent were performed before the unborn baby was 13 weeks old.

A small portion of abortions — 1.4 percent or 8,365 abortions — were performed when the unborn baby was 21 weeks old or older, the CDC abortion-surveillance report said.

Unborn babies younger than 23 weeks old are usually not considered capable of living outside the womb, and many states have laws restricting abortions after viability. However, concepts about the age of viability are regularly challenged by "extreme preterm" infants who survive, such as a Florida "miracle" girl born last year at 21 weeks and six days old.

Abortion rates have been trending down since 1990, except for a one-year uptick in 2002, the CDC report said. The decline probably is explained by an increase in the number of women in their older, less fertile ages; limited access to abortion services; greater use of contraception; and a decrease in the number of unintended pregnancies, the agency said.

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