In 2022, the states with the highest rates of abortion per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years in the United States were New Mexico, Illinois, and Kansas. The states with the lowest rates of abortion were Missouri and South Dakota. Abortion differences among the states In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade allowing states to restrict the practice of abortion or outright ban it completely. A number of states immediately banned the procedure through trigger laws they had in place in anticipation of the ruling. Even before the ruling, abortion accessibility and rates varied greatly from state to state, but this difference has become even more pronounced. For example, in 2022, Florida had an abortion rate of 20.5 per 1,000 women, while the rate in Missouri was just .1. Florida had the highest total number of abortions that year, followed by New York and Illinois. While Florida reported around 82,581 abortions in 2022, there were just 88 such procedures in Missouri. Public opinion on abortion In the United States, the debate surrounding abortion is often divided among those who are “pro-life” and think abortion should be restricted or banned and those who are “pro-choice” and believe the decision to abort a pregnancy should be up to the woman. Gallup polls show the distribution of people in the United States who are pro-life or pro-choice has fluctuated over the years but in 2023 around 52 percent of respondents stated they were pro-choice while 44 percent said they were pro-life. Older respondents are more likely to express views limiting access to abortion, while younger people are more likely to believe abortion should be legal under any circumstance. However, just a small minority of people of all ages believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

In 2020, the District of Columbia had the highest abortion rate among teenage females aged 15-19 years. The abortion rate in the District of Columbia at that time was 24 abortions per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 years. This statistic depicts the rate of abortion per 1,000 U.S. females aged 15 to 19 in the year 2020, by state.

In 2022, the rate of abortion among adolescent women aged 19 years in the United States was around 12.4 per 1,000 population. Abortion in the United States remains a controversial and divisive subject. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the historic court ruling that gave women the right to abortion. Now states are allowed to completely ban the procedure if they so choose. However, despite the ruling and subsequent abortion bans in many states, polls show the majority of U.S. adults still favor the legalization of abortion. How many abortions are there in the U.S. per year? In 2022, there were around 613,000 legal abortions in the United States. This was one of the lowest numbers recorded since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. The rate of abortions per 100 live births in 2022 was 19.9, a significant decrease from a rate of 30.6 reported in 1997. The states with the highest rates of abortion in 2022 were New Mexico, Illinois, and Kansas, while Missouri and South Dakota had the lowest rates. Abortion among adolescents The rate of abortion among adolescent women in the United States aged 15 to 19 years has also decreased over the past decade. In 2013, there were around 8.2 abortions among adolescent women per 1,000 population. By the year 2022, this figure had dropped to 5.4 per 1,000 population. The majority of abortions among adolescents occur at week nine or less of gestation. The birth control pill is one of the safest and most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy, but only around 23 percent of female high school students who were sexually active were using the pill in 2021.