According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, abortion and pregnancy rates in the country are at the lowest since the health agency started tracking the figures. The report offers a view of the country's current reproductive trends.
In 1990, there were 1.6 million induced abortions, but the figures dropped in 2010, the year when the latest statistics become available. In 1980, the rate was 29.4 abortions per 1,000 women in their childbearing phase. In 2010, the numbers dropped to 17.7 per 1,000 women, another all-time low. Initial figures from 2011 suggest that both rates and numbers for abortion continue to spiral down.
In 2010, about 6.2 million women in the U.S. conceived, resulting in a 98.7 pregnancies for every 1,000 women in their childbearing phase. The rate was 15 percent below the peak in 1990, which was 115.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women.
The 2010 pregnancy rate has been the lowest figure since 1986. These pregnancies resulted in 1.1 million prompted abortions, 4 million live births and 1.05 million lost fetuses.
"Across the states, the rate of unintended pregnancy is going down. That suggests that fewer women are getting pregnant when they don't want to. It's happening across the board, and affects the birth rate and the abortion rate," said scientist Kathryn Kost from the reproductive and sexual health group Guttmacher Institute.
The CDC report found women aged 25 to 29 years old had the highest pregnancy rates (157.1 per 1,000 women), followed by women aged 20 to 24 years old (144.6 per 1,000 women). Respectively, the two subsets presented a 12 and 27 percent decline since 1990.
In the last 20 years, 30-something women experienced a spike in pregnancy rates. However, the figures seem to be decreasing since 2006. The CDC report was released by the agency's National Center for Health Statistics department.
"The drop in birth rates from 2007 through 2013 has been well documented. However, it is also important to examine total rates of pregnancy and other pregnancy outcomes (abortion and fetal loss) to provide a comprehensive picture of current reproductive trends," wrote the CDC researchers.
The National Vital Statistics System provided the data on birth. The abortion figures were jointly supplied by the Guttmacher Institute and the Abortion Surveillance System. The National Survey of Family Growth provided the data on fetal losses.
