There have been approximately 36.5 million abortions in the twenty five years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized unrestricted abortion on January 22, 1973.
Before the January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions that legalized abortion on demand in all states, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated the following legal abortions for previous years: 1970, 193,491; 1971, 485,816; and 1972, 586,760. (Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Abortion Surveillance: United States, 1993 and 1994," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Aug. 8, 1997.)
Except when noted, the following statistics are based on research published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--the nation's largest abortion facility. AGI has not published detailed figures on the total number of abortions since 1992, though it did give an estimate of 1,435,000 abortions for 1994 to USA Today in August of 1996. Data from 1995 comes from the Centers for Disease Control, as noted at the bottom. Estimates for 1993 and 1996-7 are based on trends from previous years. In the past, AGI has estimated a possible 3-6% rate of underreporting. The following uses the lower figure and then includes an average of 4% underreporting:
Year Annual Number of Abortions
1973 744,600
1974 898,600
1975 1,034,200
1976 1,179,300
1977 1,316,700
1978 1,409,600
1979 1,497,700
1980 1,553,900
1981 1,577,300
1982 1,573,900
1983 1,575,000
1984 1,577,200
1985 1,588,600
1986 1,574,000
1987 1,559,100
1988 1,590,800
1989 1,566,900
1990 1,608,600
1991 1,556,500
1992 1,528,900
1993 1,500,000 estimated
1994 1,435,000 *
1995 1,210,000 **
1996 1,200,000 estimated
1997 1,200,000 estimated
subtotal 35,056,400
+1,402,256 (4% underreporting)
GRAND TOTAL 36,458,656 abortions, 1973-1997
Source for statistics for 1973 through 1992: Stanley K. Henshaw, et al.,"Abortions Services in the United States, 1991 and 1992," Family Planning Perspectives, vol.26, no.3 (May/June 1994), p.101
* 1994 Statistics reported in USA Today, August 14, 1996, p. A17, attributed to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
** 1995 Statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control reported in "Abortion Rate Falls Because Contraceptives Used More, CDC Says," July 2, 1998 Bloomberg News service.