Learn more at www.agi-usa.org
and at
www.prochoice.org

Abortion is very common:
Unintended pregnancy is a universal human experience – worldwide, approximately 50 million abortions occur annually.

In the late 1980’s close to 60% of all pregnancies in the U.S. were unintended; 45% of these, or 1.4 million annually, ended in abortion.

Since then, the numbers have decreased slightly: in the U.S., about 1.2 million to 1.4 million abortions occur annually.

Nearly half of all U.S. women, about 43%, will have at least one abortion some time in their lives.

In the U.S., the single most common surgical procedure is abortion. Abortions are done more often than tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or Cesarean section, for example.

In the 1990’s the population of the U.S. grew by more than 30 million persons.

The frequency of abortion in the U.S. is about twice that of western Europe and one fifth that of former USSR nations.

Legal abortion is very safe:
Nothing in medicine is risk-free, but legal abortion is often the safest choice for the pregnant woman.

In the U.S., the death rate for abortion is far smaller than that for tonsillectomy or appendectomy, or for most women who choose to remain pregnant and deliver.

Where abortion is illegal - and thus occur under shadowy circumstances - 60,000 to 100,000 women die of botched abortions each year: about 1600 women for every 1 million abortions.

Where abortion is legal – and thus occur in the context of thoroughly trained, properly equipped medical offices – the rate is far lower - the overall risk from abortion is 6 in 1 million abortions. For comparison, consider that in the U.S. even with the available healthcare, the overall risk of dying from pregnancy or childbirth (that is, when a woman chooses to stay pregnant) is 65 in 1 million women. (The risk for any particular woman depends on her unique circumstances, especially gestational age; even for abortions over 20 weeks the mortality rate is about 120 in 1 million abortions).

While most abortions occur quite early in pregnancy, each year tens of thousands of U.S. women have abortions in the third trimester.

54% of all abortions occur prior to 8 weeks of pregnancy, another 23% at 9-10 weeks, and the remaining23% at 11 weeks or greater.

Women of every race, religion, level of education, and socioeconomic status have abortions.