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For this report, we compiled publicly available data from the eight states that collected and reported 2021 data on women’s reasons for choosing abortion. We selected data from 2021, the year before Dobbs was decided, because many of these states limited abortion after Dobbs. These eight states accounted for approximately 123,000 abortions in 2021, which would have been around 13% of the U.S. total in 2020.[3], [4] Some of these states allow women to report multiple reasons for an abortion or to write in a particular reason, while others ask women to select the top reason or choose from a predetermined list. Additionally, some states provide more precise reasons than others. To develop an estimate of the percent of abortions performed for a given reason, data was combined from each state reporting that particular reason.Overall, common exceptions to abortion limits are estimated to account for less than 5% of all abortions.Rape and incest: 0.4%[5]Risk to the woman’s life or a major bodily function: 0.3%[6]Other physical health concerns: 2.2%[7]Abnormality in the unborn baby: 1.2%[8]Elective and unspecified reasons: 95.9%[9]
