Context: Nearly half of unintended pregnancies and more than one-fifth of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. No nationally representative statistics on abortion incidence or on the universe of abortion providers have been available since 1996.
Methods: In 2001-2002, The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) conducted its 13th survey of all known U.S. abortion providers, collecting information for 1999, 2000 and the first half of 2001. Trends were calculated by comparing the survey results with data from previous AGI surveys.
Results: From 1996 to 2000, the number of abortions fell by 3% to 1.31 million, and the abortion rate declined 5% to 21.3 per 1,000 women 15-44. (In comparison, the rate declined 12% between 1992 and 1996.) The abortion ratio in 2000 was 24.5 per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth, 5% lower than in 1996. The number of abortion providers decreased by 11% to 1,819 (46% were clinics, 33% hospitals and 21% physicians' offices); clinics provided 93% of all abortions in 2000. In that year, 34% of women aged 15-44 lived in the 87% of counties with no provider, and 86 of the nations 276 metropolitan areas had no provider. About 600 providers performed an estimated 37,000 early medical abortions during the first six months of 2001; these procedures represented approximately 6% of all abortions during that period. Abortions performed by dilation and extraction were estimated to account for 0.17% of all abortions in 2000.
Conclusions: Abortion incidence and the number of abortion providers continued to decline during the late 1990s but at a slower rate than earlier in the decade. Medical abortion began to play a small but significant role in abortion provision.