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Tuesday, May. 17, 2022

Do hundreds of women in the US die from legal abortions each year?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact
no

Very few women die from legal abortions, while far more die from illegal, unsafe abortions.

In 2018 (the latest data year available), the CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System documented only two deaths from complications related to legal abortion out of 615,000 abortions recorded that year. Between 2013 and 2018, the U.S. case-fatality rate for legal abortions was 0.41 deaths per 100,000 legal induced abortions.

In comparison, the World Health Organization reported that in developed nations, 30 per 100,000 women die from unsafe abortions yearly. In developing nations, the rate rises to 220 deaths per 100,000 abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, an estimated 22,800 women worldwide died from unsafe abortions in 2014.

A 2021 study published in the journal Demography found that banning legal abortion in the U.S. would cause a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths by driving women to seek out unsafe abortions.

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