The Guttmacher Institute shares an “Abortion Provider Census” every three years, contacting every known provider of abortions in the country since 1973. Clinics, hospitals, physicians’ offices, all known providers of legal induced abortion in a given year — over 1,500 facilities in 2017 — are surveyed by the institute. Abortion Patient Surveys are also performed typically every five to seven years.
Clinics make up some 95% of these procedures, according to Guttmacher. Outfits unresponsive to questionnaires or follow-up calls — less than half — are covered by state health department data, with the remaining totals estimated by Guttmacher researchers.
The latest year for CDC reporting is 2019, when the agency reported 629,898 of these procedures, and Guttmacher’s latest available figures are from 2020 with 930,160. Guttmacher’s reporting includes reporting from every state, Pew Research Center explains in a recent breakdown, so that’s one reason its figures tend to be higher than the federal government.
“Getting accurate information is time-consuming and difficult, but it does again result in more complete and more accurate [statistics],” Jones said, having worked within the Guttmacher Institute since 1999, overseeing the provider census since 2008.
The researcher said her institute’s surveillance is “the most comprehensive and most accurate source of information on abortion in the United States,” as CDC data is often incomplete.
Abortions are broadly divided into two categories: surgical abortions and medication abortions. Guttmacher’s data notes 2020 was the first time that more than half of all abortions in clinical settings in the U.S. were medication abortions.
