Abortion rate drops during recession

Abortions in the United States fell 5 percent during the recession and its aftermath in the biggest one-year decrease in at least a decade, perhaps because women are more careful to use birth control when times are tough, researchers say.

The decline, detailed Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Both the number of abortions and the abortion rate dropped by the same percentage.

You might think a bad economy would lead to more abortions by women who are struggling. However, John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health, said: "The economy seems to be having a fundamental effect on pregnancies, not abortions."

Some women believed they couldn't afford to get pregnant, experts said. "They . . . are more careful about birth control," said Elizabeth Ananat, a Duke University assistant professor of public policy and economics who has researched abortions.

Abortions have been dropping slightly over much of the past decade. But before this latest report, they seemed to have pretty much leveled off.

Nearly all states report abortion numbers to the federal government, but it's voluntary. A few states -- including California, which has the largest population and largest number of abortion providers -- don't send in data. While experts estimate there are more than 1 million abortions nationwide each year, the CDC counted about 785,000 in 2009 because of incomplete reporting.

The researchers found that abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age fell from about 16 in 2008 to roughly 15 in 2009. That translates to nearly 38,000 fewer abortions in one year.

Mississippi had the lowest abortion rate, at four per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The state also had only a couple of abortion providers and has the nation's highest teen birthrate. New York, second to California in number of abortion providers, had the highest abortion rate, roughly eight times Mississippi's.