Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released updated abortion data for 2021. Unfortunately, the news is not good for pro-lifers. The data indicate that the number of abortions increased by approximately 5 percent between 2020 and 2021. The abortion uptick was fairly widespread, as 34 of the 46 states that reported data both years reported an abortion increase. This marks the third time in four years that the CDC has reported an increase in the incidence of abortion.

The increase in chemical abortions is playing an important role in this abortion increase. Between 2020 and 2021, the fraction of all abortions that are chemical abortion increased from 53.6 percent to 56.0 percent. As a matter of comparison, less than a third of abortions were chemical abortions as recently as 2016. In 2021, the Biden-administration FDA continued the Covid-era policy of allowing women to obtain chemical-abortion pills without an in-person medical exam. This made abortion policy even more permissive and likely contributed to this abortion increase.

The CDC data also demonstrates that state-level policies continue to affect the incidence of abortion. In September 2021, Texas started to enforce the Heartbeat Act, which protected preborn children after six weeks’ gestation. The number of abortions fell by about 6 percent in the Lone Star State. Also, the last remaining abortion facility in Missouri reportedly quit performing abortions at various points in 2021. Unsurprisingly, the Show Me State had the lowest abortion rate in the country in 2021.

That said, federal abortion-reporting standards remain weak, and there are serious concerns about the reliability of CDC abortion data. The CDC did not report 2021 abortion data from California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. In fact, the CDC has not reported any data from California since 1997 and has not reported data from Maryland or New Hampshire since 2006. Furthermore, other states failed to report data about late-term abortions or the demographics of women who obtain abortions. Still others failed to provide specific statistics about chemical abortions or surgical abortions.

Though the short-term increase in the U.S. abortion rate is disappointing, the CDC data do show that pro-lifers have made impressive long-term progress reducing abortion rates. According to the CDC, the number of abortions fell by 18 percent between 2011 and 2021. Previous Guttmacher Institute data show that the U.S. abortion rate has fallen by more than 50 percent since its 1980 peak. The long term, pre-Dobbs decline in the U.S. abortion rate serves as an important reminder to pro-lifers living in blue states. It nicely demonstrates that even when abortion is legal, pro-lifers can still make impressive progress building a culture of life.