According to a recent survey, there has been a rise in the number of abortions performed in the United States, reversing what had been a drop that had lasted for three decades. The rise in abortion rates started in 2017, and according to a projection by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that advocates for women’s access to abortion services, one in every five pregnancies, or 20.6%, would have resulted in an abortion by the year 2020. In 2017, 18.4% of pregnancies were terminated by means of an abortion.
The institution, which reports that the number of abortions jumped to 930,160 in 2020 from 862,320 in 2017, said that it obtains statistics by calling every known abortion facility in the nation. Every area of the nation saw a rise in the number, with the exception of the Northeast, which had a decrease of two percent. The number rose by twelve percent in the West, ten percent in the Midwest, eight percent in the South, and two percent in the Northeast.
The new information was made public just as the Supreme Court was getting ready to hand down a decision that might have the impact of overturning the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, which has kept abortion legal in the United States for over half a century. If the final decision of the court is similar to a draught opinion that was published last month, it is anticipated that approximately half of the states will swiftly ban or severely restrict access to abortion, while other states are preparing to expand access for patients who live in states where abortion is unavailable.
“there were no apparent trends” to explain each state’s trajectory, according to the analysis, which revealed that the number and rate of abortions grew in 33 states and the District of Columbia. It proposed a number of causes for the rise on a national scale, including developments that directly impacted those with low incomes, the demographic that has been the most likely to seek abortions in recent years: There has been an increase in the number of states that have extended Medicaid coverage for abortion, as well as charities that provide individuals seeking abortions financial support.
The policy of the Trump administration, which prevented programmes that received federal family planning money, often known as Title X grants, from promoting the option of abortion to patients, might be considered another element in this incident. According to the findings of the Guttmacher report, the fact that Planned Parenthood and several state governments chose not to accept funding from Title X as a result of this rule may have resulted in fewer low-income individuals having access to other family planning services, such as contraception, and increased the number of pregnancies that were unintended.
The increase in the number of abortions had occurred at a period when several states with conservative governments were imposing additional regulations on the practise. According to the report, however, despite the fact that 25 states passed 168 abortion restrictions between 2017 and 2020, many of these restrictions were passed by states that already had significant restrictions in place, suggesting that the new laws may not have prevented a significant number of additional abortions. The period covered by the report was from 2017 to 2020.
In point of fact, the percentage increase in the number of abortions in those states was lower than the percentage increase in the number of abortions in some conservative states, such as Mississippi, where the number of abortions increased by 40 percent from 2017 to 2020, and Oklahoma, where the number of abortions rose 103 percent during that time period.
The increase in Mississippi is particularly noteworthy due to the fact that the Supreme Court is presently reviewing a 2018 Mississippi statute that prohibits the majority of abortions performed after 15 weeks into a pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher analysis, Mississippi citizens previously travelled to neighbouring states to have abortions. However, once other states passed restrictions that caused clinics to closure, an increase in the number of patients visiting Mississippi’s only abortion clinic occurred.
Even though Oklahoma recently enacted the nation’s strictest abortion ban, the state saw an increase in the number of abortions performed between 2017 and 2020. However, it is likely that this was due to the fact that many patients had travelled there from Texas, which has many laws that are restrictive. However, a recent analysis found that over the same time period there was a rise in the number of abortions performed in the state of Texas. This increase was the same proportion as that seen in New York.
The number of abortions in Missouri dropped from 4,710 in 2017 to 170 in 2020, making it the state with the largest percentage drop among the 17 states where both the number and rate declined. According to the data, this decrease may be attributed to patients from Missouri seeking abortions in Illinois, a state where the number of abortions climbed by 25 percent over that time period.
