The abortion rate among U.S. females aged 15 to 19 fell from 44 abortions per 1,000 females in 1988 to 7.5 per 1,000 in the year 2020. This statistic depicts the abortion rate per 1,000 U.S. females aged 15 to 19 years from 1973 to 2020.

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 1973, there were around 32 teen abortions for women aged 18 to 19 years per 1,000 women in the United States. This figure had decreased to about 14 by 2020. This statistic illustrates the abortion rates among teens in the United States from 1973 to 2020, by age.

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.

Number of teen pregnancies and rates per 1,000 females, by pregnancy outcome (live births, induced abortions, or fetal loss), by age group (under 20 years, 20 to 24 years, 25 to 29 years, 30 to 34 years, 35 to 39 years, or 40 years and over), 1974 to 2005.

Evidence – qualitative and quantitative – was generated from interviews with adolescents aged 10-19 years in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Zambia to understand how adolescent abortion-related care-seeking differs across a range of socio-legal national contexts. Our comparative study design includes countries with varying levels of restriction on access to abortion: Ethiopia (abortion is legal and services implemented); Zambia (legal, complex services with numerous barriers to implementations and provision of information); and Malawi (legally highly restricted). Most adolescents (98%) in Ethiopia obtained a medically safe abortion, with most adolescents (64%) in Zambia and almost all adolescents (94%) in Malawi obtaining a less medically safe abortion.

A total of 313 facility-based interviews were carried out with adolescents aged 10-19 in 2018/19 in Ethiopia (n=99), Malawi (n=104), and Zambia (n=110). Adolescents were seeking public sector care for either safe abortion or post-abortion care for complications from an abortion initiated elsewhere. Adolescent recruitment was initiated by a study-trained senior nurse, who identified and invited eligible participants to participate in the study upon their readiness for discharge.

Our research assistants (RAs) were all females in their twenties or early thirties and were recruited after the completion of intensive (two weeks) training from the project team that included role-playing and pilot interviews. We completed paid training for more RAs than the project required; performance during training and piloting were explicitly part of our RA recruitment process. Interviews with adolescents were conducted in a private setting in each facility by RAs fluent in all major local languages. Informed consent was obtained from adolescents aged 18 and above, while for those under 18, consent was sought from an accompanying parent or guardian with the respondent's assent. Unaccompanied respondents under 18 were considered emancipated minors, and their independent consent was obtained.

Each adolescent in our study had one interview. A set of approaches were used to maximize the likelihood of disclosure of abortion-related behaviors, and to elicit the details, many of which were multiple attempts to end the pregnancy interwoven into a complex trajectory over weeks or months. For interviews where consent or assent was granted, they were recorded and subsequently transcribed (qualitative) and data entered (quantitative) by the RAs.

In each interview, there were normally two RAs: one RA (Interviewer 1) conducted the interview in a conversational style to put the participant at ease and facilitate the narrative flow, whilst a second RA (Interviewer 2) completed the datasheet seated to the side of or behind Interviewer 1, so as not to influence or distract her from the conversation. Interviewer 2 was always positioned to be visible to the respondent [i.e.: not behind her]. As Interviewer 1 conducted the interview using a conversational style to follow and probe the responses, Interviewer 2 completed the datasheet (see below). Interviewer 1 did not write and was able to maintain eye contact and react to the adolescent’s body language, facial expressions, and emotions. Before closing the interview, Interviewer 1 re-introduced Interviewer 2 who would ask supplementary questions building on the conversation she had listened to. During training RAs had learnt and internalized the overall logic of the research project, so that when they were Interviewer 1 they knew the topics and questions that they needed to probe for.

Our research project wanted to understand – in detail –adolescent abortion-related care-seeking. We wanted to generate quantitative and qualitative evidence quickly to minimize burden on respondents who may be feeling uneasy or uncomfortable after receiving abortion-related care. We needed a tool that would collect data quickly and facilitate disclosure. We refined a datasheet approach that had previously been used in a study of abortion care-seeking in Zambia (Coast and Murray 2016). Due to the number of closed questions, the datasheet shows superficial similarities to a survey questionnaire. Critically, however, the order of the questions was not pre-determined – RAs were able to decide which questions to ask depending on the conversation. Interviewer 2 added the information to the data sheet by following the flow of the conversation rather than a pre-determined order. The size of the datasheet (A3) allowed for notes on the tone or content of the discussion to be written on the margins or for detailed notes if consent to record was not given. RAs understood that “messiness” on the datasheet was not a problem; what mattered was capturing the complexity of adolescents’ experiences. Datasheets for each country are available.

To minimize the burden on respondents and maximize likelihood of completion, we did not want to conduct separate qualitative and quantitative interviews. A survey instrument demanding specific question order response patterns would be inappropriate for understanding the complexity of abortion-related care-seeking. We needed an instrument that would allow for the simultaneous collection of quantitative and qualitative evidence. Narratives about abortion care-seeking are not linear, and we needed an approach that would allow us to respond to the adolescent’s narrative whilst ensuring that quantitative evidence was generated to allow for aggregation and comparison. In many survey instruments on abortion-related care-seeking there is little detailed questioning about concurrent and/or unsuccessful abortion attempts, and nearly all instruments have a linear chronological design. Our approach was purposely nonchronological and nonlinear to respond to adolescents’ narratives. Our datasheet allowed us to capture non-linear and concurrent trajectories to be recorded in detail in a way that would be impossible with a structured chronological questionnaire.

Our prior experience meant that we knew that attempting to gain disclosure of abortion attempt(s) and care-seeking is difficult – for very good reason. Adolescents are afraid of admitting to behaviors that are stigmatized, might be potentially criminalized, and have punitive outcomes (e.g.: police involvement, abuse from health professionals or from parents or partners). We developed a flipchart in each setting as a way of helping to identify local (perceived) abortifacients (e.g.: medications, toxic substances). We produced a flipchart booklet of locally produced photographs of all the ways in which adolescents might attempt or have an abortion in each context. To generate the photographs, during training we had an intensive and iterative group discussion amongst the RAs and country team members – to generate a long list of all the possible abortion methods, irrespective of efficacy, that anyone had ever heard about. These discussions served a useful secondary purpose of eliciting, debating, and discussing RAs’ beliefs and understandings about abortion methods. The RAs then took photographs of each of these methods in community settings and created a laminated flipchart booklet. The photographs were context-specific, and all three countries had different pictures.

The flipchart was a low cost and low technology option that yielded positive results in terms of facilitating the disclosure of abortion – and abortion methods – by adolescents. The flipchart helped with recall because many adolescents make multiple, sequential, and concurrent attempts to try and terminate a pregnancy. It helped to identify pharmaceuticals that adolescents did not know the names of. Finally, the flipchart helped respondents to define the steps, components, and timelines of their abortion trajectory.

Our use of a flipchart – locally produced in each context – served multiple purposes. First, it served to normalize adolescent’s behaviours in relation to the stigmatized issue of abortion; when an adolescent sees and points at – but does not necessarily speak about – something that she used or did, it communicates to her that others have also done this. Second, it helped to identify more accurately – especially in relation to pharmaceuticals – what medication adolescents had used. Finally, it was a time-effective way of eliciting information; RAs did not have to verbally describe a range of methods and wait for a response. We know that adolescents often lack accurate information on abortion and the flipchart was an important way of enabling and adding detail to abortion disclosure.

Introduction: Various non-pharmacological interventions to prevent coronavirus dissemination were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including school closures. The effect of these interventions on particular aspects of people’s lives such as sexual and reproductive health outcomes has not been adequately discussed. The objective of the study was to compare the monthly hospital admission rates due to abortion before and during school closure. Methods: We used an interrupted time series (IES) design to estimate the hospital admission rates before and during the school closure (intervention in March 2020) period. The analysis was performed considering all girls from age groups of interest and by stratifying the age groups according to skin color (white and non-white) in which the non-white category comprised both the black and mixed ethnicity together. Coefficients and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated using segmented linear regression models. Results: The results showed positive and statistically significant coefficients, suggesting post-intervention trend changes both in the population as a whole (coefficient: 0.07; 95% CI: 0.02; 0.11) and the non-white population group (coefficient: 0.07; 95% CI: 0.03; 0.11), indicating that the monthly hospital admission rates increased over the post-intervention period compared to baseline pre-intervention period. The ITS analysis did not detect statistically significant trend changes (coefficient: 0.02; 95% CI: −0.01; 0.05) in abortion admission rates in the white girl population group. Conclusion: The hospitalizations in Brazil due to abortions in 10- to 14-year-old girls increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 compared to 2019, and the number of abortions was higher in the non-white population than the white population. Furthermore, recognizing that the implementation of school closure has affected the minority population differentially can help develop more effective actions to face other future similar situations.

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 2022, there were around ** legal abortions per 100 live births among unmarried women in the United States. In comparison, the rate of abortion per live births among married women was around **** per 100. The abortion rates for both married and unmarried women in the United States have decreased over the last few decades. Abortion statistics in the United States In 2022, the overall rate of abortion in the United States per 100 live births was ****. Abortion in the U.S. is most common among women aged 25 to 29 years, with around ***abortions per 1,000 women in this age group. The most common method of abortion in 2022 was medical abortion with a gestation of nine weeks or less, followed by surgical abortion with a gestation of 13 weeks or less. Medical abortion involves taking prescription medication to end the pregnancy, while surgical abortion involves a surgical procedure. The two main types of surgical abortion are vacuum aspiration and dilation and evacuation (D&E). Abortion-related deaths in the United States are very rare, with only **** such deaths reported in 2021. Abortion among adolescents In 2022, the abortion rate among adolescent women in the United States aged 15 to 19 years was *** per 1,000 population. In comparison, in 2013, this rate was *** per 1,000 women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the abortion rate among adolescent women increases with age. In 2022, those aged 19 years had the highest rate of abortion among teenagers. The majority of abortions performed on adolescent women are done in week **** or less of gestation. In 2022, there were around ****** abortions performed on adolescent women in week nine or less of gestation, while ***** abortion procedures were carried out after week nine of gestation.

In England and Wales in 2022, the conception rate among women aged between 30 and 34 years was approximately 115.7 per 1,000 women, meaning this age group had the highest rate of conceptions that year. Slightly lower was the rate of conceptions among 25 to 29-year-olds at 113.7 conceptions per 1,000 women, while there were 80.4 conceptions per 1,000 women aged between 20 and 24 years of age. Trends in teenage conceptions The rate of teenage pregnancies has declined sharply in the last ten years. In 2008, the conception rate among teenagers was approximately 60 per 1,000; by 2021, this rate has dropped to 26.1 as displayed above. While the number of teenage pregnancies has dropped in England and Wales, the share of pregnant teenagers getting abortions has increased. The share of teenage conceptions ending in abortion increased from 40.1 percent in 2004 to 51.6 percent in 2021. Additionally, teenagers are the most likely age group in England and Wales to go through with an abortion after a pregnancy. Birth rate trends in the UK In 2021, the birth rate in the UK was 10.4 births per 1,000 population, which, except for 2020, was the lowest birth rate in the country since the start of the provided time period in 1938. The average age at which a mother gives birth in the UK has also increased alongside the drop in birth rate. In 2000, the average age of a mother giving birth in the UK was 28.5; by 2021, it was 30.9 years old. Furthermore, there were just 41 live births per woman aged 22 in 2022, compared with 71 live births for 22-year-olds in 2002 and 86 live births for women aged 22 in 1992.

In 2023, the birth rate among teenagers and young adult women aged 15 to 19 stood at 13.1 births per every thousand women. This statistic shows the U.S. birth rate among teenagers and young adult women, aged 15-19 years, between 1991 and 2023. Teenage pregnancy and birth Teenage pregnancy and births are related to a number of negative outcomes. Babies born to teenage mothers are more likely to be premature and have a low birth weight, and teen mothers often experience gestational hypertension and anemia. Additionally, there are significant adverse effects on socioeconomic and educational outcomes for teenage parents. Teenage pregnancy is usually unplanned and due to the negative consequences mentioned above the ratio of legal abortions to live births in the United States is highest among teenagers. In 2022, there were 374 legal abortions per 1,000 live births among girls and young women aged 15 to 19 years, compared a ratio of 284 legal abortions per 1,000 live births among women aged 20 to 24 years. Contraceptive use among teens Contraceptive use is the best way for sexually active teenagers to avoid unwanted pregnancies, but use and accessibility remain problems in the United States. In 2021, only 23 percent of high school girls in the U.S. used the birth control pill to prevent pregnancy before their last sexual intercourse. Use of the birth control pill to prevent pregnancy is highest among white teenagers and lowest among Black teenagers, with only 11 percent of Black teenagers reporting use in 2021. Condom use is more common among high school students, but still only around half of sexually active students reported using a condom during their last sexual intercourse in 2021.

The number of abortions performed per thousand women in Spain reached 12.5 in 2011, the maximum value recorded in the period studied. From 2011 to 2016 there was a gradual decline in the abortion rate, dropping to 10.4 abortions per thousand women. However, there has been an increase in the rate of abortions since then, reaching 11.68 per thousand women in 2022. An exception was observed in 2020 when this figure decreased. In that year, Catalonia was the Spanish region with the highest abortion rate, followed by Madrid, and the Balearic Islands.

Teenage abortion rates

In 2022, the age group that registered the highest abortion rate was that of women from 20 to 24 years old, with more than 18 voluntary abortions performed per thousand women. The abortion rate in women under 20 amounted to 8.5 abortions per thousand women, the second-lowest rate after that of women over 39 years. In addition, the abortion rate in teenage women has generally decreased in the past few years, dropping from 13.7 in 2011 to 8.5 in 2022.

Attitudes towards abortion

During a survey carried out in Spain in 2023, around 37 percent of respondents stated that abortion should be legal in all cases, while another 36 percent was of the opinion that it should be legal in most cases. In contrast, four percent of interviewees thought abortion should be always illegal, with an additional 12 percent stating that it should be illegal in most cases.

Five percent of the pregnant women surveyed for this study stated that they already had an abortion by the age of 18 years old.

In England and Wales in 2021, the conception rate among women aged between 30 and 34 years was approximately 116.2 per 1,000 women, meaning this age group had the highest rate of conceptions that year. Slightly lower was the rate of conceptions among 25 to 29-year-old's at 113.6 conceptions per 1,000 women, while there were 78.9 conceptions per 1,000 women aged between 20 and 24 years of age. Trends in teenage conceptions The rate of teenage pregnancies has declined sharply in the last ten years. In 2008, the conception rate among teenagers was approximately 60 per 1,000, by 2021 this rate has dropped to 26.1 as displayed above. While the number of teenage pregnancies has dropped in England and Wales, the share of pregnant teenagers getting abortions has increased. The share of teenage conceptions ending in abortion increased from 40.1 percent in 2004 to 51.6 percent in 2021. Additionally, teenagers are the most likely age group in England and Wales to go through with an abortion after a pregnancy. Birth rate trends in the UK In 2021, the birth rate in the UK was 10.4 births per 1,000 population, which, with the exception of 2020, was the lowest birth rate in the country since the start of the provided time period in 1938. The average age at which a mother gives birth in the UK has also increased alongside the drop in birth rate. In 2000, the average age of a mother giving birth in the UK was 28.5, by 2021 it was 30.9 year's old. Furthermore, there were just 41 live births per women aged 22 in 2022, compared with 71 live births for 22-year-olds in 2002, and 86 live births for women aged 22 in 1992.