Number of abortions in US since abortion became legal

1. Why totals differ: reporting gaps and different methodologies

Two principal data streams drive national totals — CDC surveillance (which is state‑reported and voluntary) and researchers such as the Guttmacher Institute that survey providers directly — and those methods produce different annual and cumulative counts because some states do not report to CDC and Guttmacher uses additional provider surveys and adjustment models ^{[1] [2]}. Advocacy groups and calculators then apply further adjustments or projections (for example to account for “missing providers” or estimated undercounts), which multiplies the range of published cumulative totals and produces divergent headlines from different organizations ^{[4] [5]}.

2. The commonly cited range through 2020: roughly 62–64 million

Several organizations and compilations that have aggregated historical data arrive at totals in the low‑to‑mid 60 million range for the period beginning with Roe in 1973 through around 2020: examples include fact sheets and counters that cite figures such as about 62.5 million, 63.4 million, or “63.6 million+” depending on which data and adjustments are used ^{[4] [3] [6]}. These numbers reflect different mixes of CDC counts, Guttmacher estimates, and post‑hoc adjustments applied by third parties; they are not identical but cluster close enough to characterize a commonly reported cumulative magnitude through roughly 2020 ^{[1] [2]}.

3. What recent data change about cumulative totals (post‑2020)

Since 2020, the landscape of abortion provision and reporting has shifted: Guttmacher’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study reported an estimated 1,037,000 abortions in 2023 alone — the first full year after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision — and has extended routine tracking that can be used to update cumulative totals ^[7]. KFF and other analysts have updated briefs noting that total national abortions slightly increased in the three years following Dobbs, and new monthly tracking (Society for Family Planning’s #WeCount and Guttmacher’s study) captures higher volumes in 2024–2025 that would push any cumulative total upward if added to the earlier aggregates ^{[8] [7]}.

4. A defensible answer — and its limits

Using only the documents provided here, the defensible statement is that cumulative estimates commonly cited for the period from Roe through about 2020 are in the low‑to‑mid 60 millions (roughly 62–64 million) while more recent, reputable surveillance from Guttmacher indicates large additional annual counts in 2022–2024 (including ~1,037,000 in 2023) that would increase the grand total if someone assembled a continuous, reconciled series across sources ^{[3] [4] [6] [7]}. There is no single, undisputed, up‑to‑the‑minute cumulative number in the provided reporting because CDC and Guttmacher use different methods and because third‑party aggregators apply divergent adjustments; therefore any single “total” must be presented as an estimate built from those underlying inputs ^{[1] [2]}.

5. What readers should watch for in future tallies

Future updates that reconcile Guttmacher’s ongoing Monthly Abortion Provision Study, CDC surveillance gaps, and state reporting (or that publish a unified retrospective aggregation through 2024 or 2025) will permit a more precise cumulative total; until then, the most transparent approach is to cite the range anchored by established compilations (≈62–64 million through ~2020) and add explicit annual counts since 2020 from Guttmacher (for example, ~1,037,000 in 2023) rather than to claim a single exact cumulative number without showing the aggregation method ^{[7] [1]}.