Fact Sheet: A Summary of the CDC’s 2022 Abortion Surveillance Report

OVERVIEW OF 2022 ABORTION TRENDS

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its annual abortion surveillance report[1] on November 28, detailing 2022 abortion data in 48 reporting areas (46 states, NYC, and D.C.).
• There were 613,383 total abortions reported in 2022.
• From 2021 to 2022, the total number of abortions decreased by 2% in the 48 reporting areas while drug-induced abortions decreased by 0.4% among the 46 reporting areas that reported abortions by method type in both 2021 and 2022.
• On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade (1973) was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision. As a result of this monumental decision, 18 states were able to enforce existing or newly passed legislation prohibiting abortion at conception, when the baby’s heartbeat was detected, or after 15 weeks of gestation for portions or the remainder of 2022.[2] The Dobbs decision was the main driver of the slight decrease in total abortions from 2021 to 2022.[3]
• The CDC report is subject to significant limitations. Several large states neglect to collect abortion data, including states that permit abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. States that do report are inconsistent, and data quality varies.

OVERALL TRENDS

• There were 315,392 reported drug-induced abortions, composing 58% of total abortions for which the method was reported (548,196) in 2022.
• The states with the largest absolute increases in abortion totals from 2021 to 2022 include New York (+9,223), North Carolina (+7,583), and New Mexico (+6,844). The states with the largest percentage increases include Wyoming (+424%), New Mexico (+140%), and Kansas (+57%).
• The states with the largest absolute decreases in abortion totals from 2021 to 2022 include Texas (-34,346), Tennessee (-5,730), and Oklahoma (-5,127). The states with the largest percentage decreases include Oklahoma (-70%), Texas (-66%), and Wisconsin (-49%).
• 1.1% of abortions of known gestational age were performed at 21 weeks of gestation or later.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

• In 2021, five women were reported to have died from legal induced abortion. This is a decrease from 2020 when there were six reported deaths from legal induced abortions.
• In 2022, the majority of abortions were obtained by:
  • Women in their twenties (57%)
  • Non-Hispanic Black women (39%), with an abortion rate (24.4 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15-44) 4.3 times the white abortion rate of 5.7
  • Non-Hispanic women (79%)
  • Unmarried women (88%)
  • Women with zero previous abortions (56%)

CONCLUSIONS

• 47 reporting areas have reported continuously from 2013-2022, but California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey continue to not report any data to the CDC.
• Michigan will no longer collect data for abortions performed in the state in 2024 or later and as a result will no longer report abortion data to the CDC or publish annual state abortion reports.[4]

[1] “Abortion Surveillance – United States, 2022” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 28, 2024), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/ss/pdfs/ss7307a1-H.pdf.

[2] Those 18 states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. After the Dobbs decision, Indiana, Iowa, and Utah all had differing types of gestational age legislation enforced for less than a week before the laws were blocked by respective state-level courts. Currently, many of these 18 states’ laws are no longer in effect, while other states not included in this list have enacted gestational protections, such as North Carolina and Nebraska (both states limit abortion after 12 weeks of gestation).

[3] As a result of the Dobbs decision, patterns of abortion access changed in the United States. Recent estimates have shown that in 2023, women relied more and more on abortion drugs being shipped via the mail and that more women traveled to states with little to no gestational protections for unborn children to obtain abortions. The 2022 CDC report notes that the reporting of abortions performed via telehealth services and via the mail are not differentiated in the report and varies by reporting area.

[4] Mia Steupert, “Abortion Reporting: Michigan (2023),” Charlotte Lozier Institute, November 13, 2024, https://lozierinstitute.org/abortion-reporting-michigan-2023/.