What proportion of abortion patients in the U.S. in 2021–2023 reported a prior abortion, by age group?

1. The headline numbers and why they matter

Guttmacher’s 2021–2022 Abortion Patient Survey—one of the principal sources researchers use to understand patient characteristics—reported that 58% of abortion patients said the procedure they were obtaining was their first, a figure the institute used as the basis for broader lifetime-incidence modeling ^{[1] [4]}. That implies about 42% of patients across the surveyed sample had had at least one prior abortion; the same Guttmacher reporting also highlights that this distribution is age-patterned, not uniform across cohorts ^[1].

2. Age patterns: younger patients tend to be first-timers; older patients more often repeat patients

Guttmacher’s analysis explicitly reports that only 41–43% of individuals in their 30s and 40s were obtaining their first abortion—therefore a majority (57–59%) in those age groups reported a prior abortion—whereas the overall 58%-first-abortion statistic reflects the influence of younger patients who are disproportionately first-time patients ^[1]. The Contraception paper that updated lifetime-incidence estimates used the same 2021–2022 Abortion Patient Survey to calculate age-specific first-abortion and cumulative rates, underscoring that first-abortion rates vary substantially by age ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Limits of the public surveillance picture: CDC vs. Guttmacher and missing state data

Federal surveillance (CDC Abortion Surveillance) provides trend and demographic context for 2021 and 2022 but relies on voluntary state reporting and historically has omitted major states in some years; this complicates direct translation of CDC totals into precise national age-group breakdowns for 2021–2023 ^{[2] [3]}. The CDC’s annual summaries document overall numbers, rates and method trends—for example, the rise in medication abortion—but do not offer the same nationally representative, patient-survey–based breakdown of prior-abortion status by fine-grained age bands that Guttmacher’s APS does ^{[6] [3]}.

4. What the peer-reviewed modeling adds — and what it does not

Researchers publishing in Contraception used Guttmacher’s APS plus population denominators and provider counts to estimate first-abortion rates and cumulative (lifetime) incidence by age group; those models support the headline that about one in four U.S. women would be expected to have an abortion by age 45 under 2020–2021 rates, and they illustrate how first-abortion probabilities shift across age cohorts ^{[4] [5]}. However, the snippets provided do not include a full table of precise percentages for every standard age band (e.g., 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–44) for 2021–2023, so reporting cannot credibly produce a complete, year-by-year age breakdown beyond the 30s/40s and overall figures cited above without accessing the full APS tables or the Contraception article’s supplemental material ^{[4] [5]}.

5. Reconciling the evidence: what can be stated with confidence

It is supported by the Guttmacher survey that a majority (58%) of abortion patients in 2021–2022 were obtaining their first abortion and that among people in their 30s and 40s a majority were obtaining a subsequent abortion (meaning 57–59% had at least one prior abortion) ^[1]. Broader national surveillance (CDC) confirms overall counts and method shifts for 2021–2022 but cannot, in the public snippets provided, replace the APS for nuanced age-by-prior-abortion estimates because of reporting gaps and differing methodologies ^{[2] [6]}. Where exact age-band percentages beyond those reported by Guttmacher are required, the primary APS dataset or the full Contraception paper and its supplementary tables are the appropriate next step ^{[4] [5]}.