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Abortion Facts and Statistics

49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; 1/2 of these are terminated by abortion.

Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 55% have had a previous birth.

An estimated 43% of women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old.

Each year, an estimated 50 million abortions occur worldwide. Of these, 30 million procedures are obtained legally, 20 million illegally.

52% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 20%.

2/3 of women having abortions intend to have children in the future.

While white women obtain 60% of all abortions, their abortion rate is well below that of minority women. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely.

Women who report no religious affiliation are about 4 times as likely as women who report some affiliation to have an abortion.

On average, women give at least 3 reasons for choosing abortion: 3/4 say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities; about 2/3 say they cannot afford a child; and 1/2 say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

About 14,000 women have abortions each year because they became pregnant after rape or incest.

93% of U.S. abortions are performed in clinics or doctors' offices.

In 1996, 1.37 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.61 million in 1990. From 1973 through 1996, more than 34 million legal abortions occurred.