17 January 2012

The Providers of Abortion in the U.S.

Who provides abortions in the United States?

The chart below reveals what we found for the year 2008, which corresponds to the most recent year for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has published data regarding the racial distribution of who obtains abortions in the U.S., which we referenced in our previous post on the topic. The sources for the information in the chart below is the Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood:

Number of U.S. Abortion Providers by Type, 2008

Overall, just over 94% of all abortions in the United States were performed in clinics, as opposed to hospitals or physician offices, with just under 70% of the total of 1,212,350 abortions in the U.S. in 2008 being performed in just 378 specialized abortion clinics. There were 1,793 abortion providers in the United States in 2008.

Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion services in the United States, accounted for 26.7% of all abortions performed in 2008.

Data Sources

Jones, Rachel K. and Kooistra, Kathryn. Guttmacher Institute. Abortion Incidence and Access to Services in the United States, 2008. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Volume 43, Issue 1. 10 January 2011.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Fact Sheet. Planned Parenthood Services. September 2010.