Abortion Surveillance - Legal Abortions, United States Annual Summary 1971

摘要

In 1969, the Center for Disease Control initiated surveillance of legal abortions in the United States. Since then, abortion laws, abortion reporting, and abortion ratios in the United States have changed dramatically. In 1969, there were 9 states with liberalized abortions laws, and of these, only 5 reported abortion data to CDC. Fewer than 13,000 legal abortions were reported, and the national abortion ratio was 3.5 reported legal abortions per 1,000 live births. One year later, in 1970, a total of 16 states had new laws, and data were available from 19 states plus the District of Columbia. The fact that there were more reporting areas than states with new laws reflects the widespread change in abortion practices that occurred in some states which had not passed new abortion laws, but where there were either court challenges to state laws or where the law was written in sufficiently broad terms that abortion practices could change without an actual change in the statute. In 1970, the number of reported legal abortions was approximately 180,000, and the national abortion ratio increased 14-fold to 48.4 per 1,000 live births. In 1971, there were no major legislative changes, although 5 more states began to collect abortion data. Over 480,000 legal abortions were reported, and the national abortion ratio increased almost 3 fold to 136.0 abortions for every 1,000 live births.