WASHINGTON — The U.S. abortion rate dropped during the 1990s, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency. Between 1990 and 1999, abortions among adult women dropped from a rate of 27.4 abortions for every 1,000 women to 21.4 abortions, according to the report.
The decrease represents a 22 percent decline. Among teenagers, the abortion rate dropped 39 percent. Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, noted that the drop in abortions was accompanied by a decline in teen sex, teen pregnancies and teen births during the late 1990s.
“This signals a deep and profound and robust change in adolescent sexual behavior in this country,” she said. “I think it’s cause for — I don’t know if ‘celebration’ is the right word — but certainly our full attention.” At the same time, researchers were surprised by a sharp increase in abortions among poorer women, or those who earn less than twice the federal poverty level of about $17,000 for a family of four. The CDC numbers do not reflect abortions obtained through use of abortion-inducing drugs that were introduced during that period, such as RU-486.
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