HISTORIC RISE

U.S. Abortions on the Rise, Reversing 30-Year Trend: Study

News that one in five pregnancies ended in abortion in 2020 comes as the Supreme Court is poised to curtail abortion rights across the country.

After abortion numbers in the United States had been waning for decades, the trend reversed and numbers increased by 8 percent in the three years ending in 2020, according to a new study. Figures published Wednesday from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research group, show there were 930,160 abortions in the U.S. in 2020, with one in five of all pregnancies ending in termination that year. One of the study’s co-authors says the rise means that the fallout from the Supreme Court’s anticipated decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and curtail access to abortion rights could be much larger than first thought. “In the 20-something years I’ve been doing research on abortion at Guttmacher, this is the first time we’ve had an increase in abortion over two years,” researcher Rachel Jones said.