CDC pauses abortion reports for first time in its history

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has paused its annual abortion surveillance report for the first time since it began publishing the reports in 1969.

The anticipated 2023 report, due out later this month, would have shed light on abortion numbers that took place during the first full year after the Dobbs Supreme Court decision overturned Roe v. Wade. The latest report published by the CDC was for 2022 data, when Dobbs was released midway through that year in June.

Key Takeaways:

• For some time, there has been speculation that the CDC would not release abortion reports for 2023 due to certain circumstances; now, this has been confirmed.

• The CDC relies on voluntary state reporting for its abortion numbers; the Guttmacher Institute reports tended to be more comprehensive and therefore, closer to the real numbers.

• However, the CDC has collected additional data, such as race and gestational age.

• The impact of Dobbs, abortion travel, shield laws, and state funding of abortion could be analyzed further using CDC data that, for now, is on hold.

The Details:

What the CDC Is Saying Now

In an e-mail, Live Action News sought information from the CDC, asking, "Is the CDC working on a 2023 abortion surveillance report and will it publish as normal this month? If not, please explain."

 A response by e-mail from Sharleta Stamps, Public Affairs Specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was clear that the government agency is pausing these reports. Stamps stated:

On background: At this time, CDC is pausing data analysis on abortion surveillance.

For quite some time, there has been speculation that the CDC might halt or delay abortion reports, partly because more states have removed requirements to report any abortion data at all, and partly because of cuts within the Division of Reproductive Health of the CDC.

What Others are Saying

The pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights claims:

Cuts include the majority of employees in the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health. According to one former staffer, all of the team’s work was essentially “eliminated overnight” because “[t]here was no plan in place to sunset any of it, or to transfer […] expertise over to someone else or to train folks.”

The team tasked with compiling and publishing data focusing on abortion access—such as how many patients are getting abortions, where, and with what methods—has been eliminated, leaving 2023 numbers “sitting in inboxes and Teams folders” and stymying efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of Dobbs.

The Trump administration also erased contraception guidelines and pages related to HIV testing directed specifically toward LGBTQ+ people, along with entire data sets of research, from the CDC website. While some information has since been restored, the pages continue to note that the “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders” regarding so-called “gender ideology” and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In September of 2025, WVTF.org reported:

Back in December [2024], the CDC sent a routine email to Virginia’s Department of Vital Statistics asking for the state’s abortion data. It’s been common practice since the agency started collecting the data in 1969. But when an email was sent from Virginia statisticians to the CDC asking for an update on the need for state data, the agency offered an unusual reply:

“At this time, CDC is pausing data analysis and will not be releasing an abortion surveillance report,” reads the unsigned email from the federal agency, acquired via a FOIA request to the Virginia Department of Health.

KFF.org wrote in July 2025:

Sweeping HHS layoffs in late March and early April gutted the CDC’s reproductive health division, upending several programs designed to protect women and infants, three fired workers said.

About two-thirds of the division’s roughly 165 employees and contractors were cut, through firings, retirements, or reassignments to other parts of the agency, one worker said.

In May 2025, Politico reported:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off thousands of federal employees last month, including about 80 who worked at the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Reproductive Health, according to three former CDC staffers granted anonymity to speak candidly on agency dynamics.

The office collected state and national data on live births, abortion trends and [IVF] fertility treatment outcomes — the kind of information policymakers rely on to assess and improve maternal and infant health care, said Isaac Michael, a former HHS statistician who worked on the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System before he was laid off...

... HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement to POLITICO that “critical programs” from the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health “will continue under the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) alongside multiple agencies and programs to improve coordination of health resources for American.”

"Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the cuts may force conservatives to rely on abortion surveillance data from groups like the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights think tank," reported Politico.

The Background:

The Beginning of Abortion Reporting

According to Perspectives in Reproductive Health, published by the Guttmacher Institute, “[T]he Population Council, The Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—collaborated to gather data by conducting what became known as abortion surveillance…”

As Live Action News previously documented, in 1969, the CDC began its abortion surveillance branch to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal abortions. By this time 10 states had decriminalized abortion and the CDC had estimated that there were 22,670 abortions. As more states began to legalize it, the numbers climbed dramatically. 

In that report the CDC acknowledged, “The need for abortion surveillance is based on a lack of accurate incidence, morbidity and mortality data.” It goes on to state, “The incidence and prevalence of induced abortion are unknown… Abortion-related morbidity is also unknown….” Planned Parenthood’s former “special affiliate,” the Guttmacher Institute, did not publish abortion data until 1973.

According to the CDC, 25 women died from "legal" abortion in 1973.

Who Historically Reported Abortion Data

Traditionally, abortion data has been compiled by the Guttmacher Institute (a former Planned Parenthood research arm and “special affiliate") and the CDC.

In 1969, years prior to Roe v. Wade, the CDC began an abortion surveillance branch to document the number and characteristics of legally obtained abortions. To date, the CDC relies solely on data voluntarily reported from the states, which individually set the standards for abortion reporting.

Currently, not all states report abortion statistics, and since the Dobbs decision in 2022, some states (Michigan and Minnesota) are planning to either stop reporting altogether or scale back what data they publish. According to Guttmacher, "45 states plus DC have some form of mandated abortion reporting."

Excluded are California, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, which "only mandates abortion reporting when a patient has made a request related to disposition of the products of conception," Guttmacher claims.

Therefore, there are large disparities in abortion data state by state. Some states require no reporting whatsoever, and others collect a variety of data on age, race, gender, gestation, complications, and other categories.

Therefore, Guttmacher’s overall numbers tend to be more comprehensive.

Guttmacher did not begin publishing abortion data until 1973. The organization previously utilized responses to abortion provider surveys for its abortion reports. Then, in late 2023, after nearly 50 years of using the same methodology, Guttmacher changed this methodology and began publishing monthly abortion estimates. Guttmacher did this despite describing this new methodology as less reliable than what had been previously used.

Thus far in 2025, we estimate that from 1973 to June of 2025, nearly 65 million preborn children have lost their lives to abortion based on Guttmacher's current reports.

CDC Tracked Additional Data

While Guttmacher's overall abortion numbers tended to be higher than CDC, the government agency gave analysts additional data based on:

• Race

• Previous live births

• Gestational age of the baby, including later abortions at or after 21 weeks gestation

• Infants born alive

• Other characteristics

"The information collected in these [CDC] reports varies by state but typically includes the names of the medical facility and the clinician providing abortion care, the patient’s demographic characteristics (e.g., age, race, ethnicity, marital status and number of previous live births), the patient’s residence details (e.g., state or locality), the gestational duration of the pregnancy and the type of abortion provided," Guttmacher reported.

Both Guttmacher and CDC have attempted to document who gets abortions, as Live Action News previously noted.

In 2022, the CDC published data which revealed that Black women, single women, women in their 20s, women with a previous live birth, and women who never had a previous induced abortion made up the majority of abortions in the various categories for 2022.

The CDC found that in 2022, just 12.3% of women who obtained an abortion were married, while 87.7% were unmarried. And while married women saw an abortion ratio of 37 abortions per 1,000 live births, single unmarried women had 376 abortions per 1,000 live births.

The Bottom Line:

Abortion numbers have been ticking upward since 2017, and have also climbed substantially under expanded mail-order abortion pill access and the Department of Justice's blatant disregard for enforcing the Federal Comstock Act. This has further enabled the illegal shipping of abortion pills under shield laws into states that restrict it.

The impact of Dobbs, abortion travel, shield laws, and state funding of abortion could be analyzed further using CDC data that, for now, is on hold. In addition, the impact of pro-life laws, heroic efforts to close abortion facilities, efforts to limit late-term abortion, and strategies holding abortionists accountable will be much more difficult to document if the annual CDC abortion data reports do not resume.