Fact Check: Abortion Rates and Systemic Factors in the United States
Mostly False
In a leaked draft opinion from the Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case, Justice Samuel Alito claims that abortion negatively impacts Black communities and people who support abortion want to “suppress the size of the African American population,” a claim that ignores systemic reasons and greater context for why there are higher rates of abortion in Black and other communities of color.
Abortions and contraception were common law legal in the United States until 1860. Midwives - who were often enslaved Black women who lacked reproductive rights themselves - provided essential reproductive healthcare in the late 1700s and early 1800s. After the Civil War, laws around abortion and reproductive healthcare started changing, becoming more restrictive as obstetrics and gynecology became the prominent reproductive field, and midwifery was demeaned as a practice.
Post Roe v. Wade (1973), abortion rates in the US have dropped significantly. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 has dropped below 1973 levels from 16.3 to 13.4 in 2017. In 2019, the CDC reported 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years. Pew Research reports that in the District of Columbia and 29 states that reported racial and ethnic data on abortion to the CDC, 38% of all women who had abortions in 2019 were non-Hispanic Black, while 33% were non-Hispanic White, 21% were Hispanic, and 7% were of other races or ethnicities.
Black, Indigenous, and people of color - especially Black women - often face more systemic issues that increase their likelihood of seeking abortions. For example, Black women are 5x times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, a rate that will only increase with abortion bans. Banning abortion nationwide would lead to a 21% increase in the number of pregnancy-related deaths overall and a 33% increase among Black women.
It is also harder for African Americans to have access to abortion care - Guttmacher Institute reports about 6 in 10 abortion providers are located in neighborhoods where more than half of residents are white whereas fewer than 1 in 10 abortion providers are located in neighborhoods where more than half of residents are black.
While Black communities have higher abortion rates than other communities, Justice Alito’s claim does not acknowledge the lack of healthcare and birth control access, income inequity, reproductive education, and other factors that lead to higher abortion rates in certain communities.
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References and Further Reading:
Jeff Diamant, Basheer Mohamed. Pew Research. What the Data Says About Abortion in the US. May 27, 2022.
Guttmacher Advisory. Claim that Most Abortion Clinics Are Located in Black or Hispanic Neighborhoods Is False. June 2014.
Carrie Blazina, Michael Lipka, John Gramlich. Pew Research. Key facts about the abortion debate in America. 17 June 2021.
Shyrissa Dobbins-Harris. National Black Law Journal. The Myth of Abortion as Black Genocide: Reclaiming our Reproductive Cycle. 2017
Planned Parenthood. Abortion Is Central to the History of Reproductive Health Care in America.
Priya Krishnakumar, Daniel Wolf. CNN. How outlawing abortion could worsen America's maternal mortality crisis. 24 June 2022.
Gopal K. Singh. Human Resources and Services Administration. Maternal Mortality in the United States 1935-2007. 2010
PRB. Black Women Over Three Times More Likely to Die in Pregnancy, Postpartum Than White Women, New Research Finds. 6 December 2021.
Emily Wagster Pettus, Leah Willingham. Associated Press. Black and Hispanic people have the most to lose if Roe is overturned. 4 May 2022.
Jaclyn Diaz, Koko Nakajima, Nick Underwood. NPR. 7 persistent claims about abortion, fact-checked. 6 May 2022.
