What percentage of abortions in the United States are performed for maternal health reasons 2020 2021?

1. What the CDC reports and what it does not

The CDC’s Abortion Surveillance reports for 2020 and 2021 provide totals (592,939 reported abortions in 2020 for 47 reporting areas; 622,108 reported abortions in 2021 for those areas) and breakouts by age, race/ethnicity, gestational age, and procedure type, but the surveillance tables and narrative do not publish a single national percentage labelled “maternal health reasons” for abortions in those years ^{[1] [5]}. The 2021 CDC report explicitly focuses on counts, rates and ratios and on abortion‑related deaths as part of the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, but it does not translate pregnancy complications into a nationwide share of abortions performed for maternal‑health indications ^{[2] [5]}.

2. Why a simple percent is hard to find in official data

CDC surveillance depends on voluntary reporting from states and local jurisdictions and on variable data items collected by jurisdictions; some items that could indicate a maternal‑health reason (for example, abortion‑related deaths, pregnancy complications, or clinical indications recorded locally) are not systematically coded into a single national “indication” field in the published tables ^{[2] [6]}. The 2022 CDC surveillance note that denominator data for certain calculations used external estimates (Guttmacher) for total abortions further illustrates differences in data sources and limits simple aggregation of clinical indications across the country ^[6].

3. What peer‑reviewed and public‑health literature says about clinical indications

Scholarly and public‑health work examines links between access to abortion and maternal outcomes and documents that restrictive policies affect maternal mortality and morbidity, implying that some abortions are performed to protect maternal health — but these studies do not provide a national percent of abortions that were performed specifically for maternal‑health indications in 2020 or 2021 ^{[3] [4]}. Commentaries and scoping reviews summarize that restrictive laws are associated with rises in maternal mortality, reinforcing that maternal‑health reasons are clinically important in abortion care, yet they stop short of giving a percentage of abortions for that indication in specific years ^{[3] [4]}.

4. Data gaps, competing sources, and why estimates diverge

Independent organizations such as Guttmacher produce comprehensive national estimates of total abortions (used as denominators in some CDC calculations), but their surveys focus on counts and service provision rather than uniformly codified clinical indications that would yield a national “maternal health reasons” share for 2020–2021 ^[6]. State reporting practices, missing jurisdictions in CDC tables (for example, California and New Jersey often are excluded from CDC’s voluntary surveillance dataset), and differences in facility survey response rates all contribute to the absence of a single authoritative percent in the available reporting ^{[5] [7]}.

5. What would be needed to produce a reliable percentage

A nationally comparable percentage would require a standard definition of “maternal health reasons,” uniform collection of clinical‑indication data across all states and territories, and complete case reporting or facility survey coverage; the current CDC surveillance format and the cited literature indicate these elements are not present in the 2020–2021 public datasets ^{[2] [6]}. Where jurisdictions or facility networks collect indication data, the figures tend to be fragmentary and not easily generalizable to the U.S. as a whole ^{[1] [5]}.

6. How to proceed if you need a number

If you need an estimate for policy or reporting purposes, options are: (a) consult state health department reports that may record clinical indications locally (noted variability expected) ^[2]; (b) review facility‑level surveys or Guttmacher studies for detailed clinical-service data where available ^[6]; or (c) request unpublished CDC or Maternal Mortality Review Committee data that might capture clinical indications — while recognizing data‑completeness and comparability limitations described in CDC surveillance ^{[2] [6]}.

Limitations and final note: available sources do not mention a single, nationally published percentage of U.S. abortions performed for “maternal health reasons” in 2020 or 2021; the CDC reports and the peer‑review literature document relevant counts, trends, and associations but not that specific breakdown ^{[1] [2] [3]}.