Although historically many doctors believed that unborn babies could not feel pain until the third trimester or even well after birth, the modern scientific literature shows that unborn babies can feel pain by 15 weeks gestation, and possibly as early as 12 weeks.[1] The majority of abortions occur in the first trimester, but a substantial number are performed at 15 weeks or later on unborn babies who are capable of experiencing pain. Due to significant limitations with U.S. abortion data,[2] the precise number of abortions after 15 weeks is unknown, but available data suggests that tens of thousands of abortions on unborn babies who feel pain are performed at 15 weeks or later each year.
How many abortions take place in the U.S. at 15 weeks of gestation or later?
2022 abortion data from the states and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that approximately 6% of all reported abortions take place at or after 15 weeks of gestation. When applied to the Guttmacher Institute’s most recent estimate of 1,032,150 abortions nationwide in 2023,[3] this is approximately 61,900 abortions at 15 weeks or later each year.
In the United States, abortion data is woefully incomplete.[4] Since states are not currently required to report abortion statistics to the CDC, not all states do, and data quality varies. For example, some of the highest abortion-volume states (California, New Jersey, and Maryland) do not report any abortion data to the CDC. Furthermore, high abortion-volume states such as New York do not report data on gestational age to the CDC even though they report abortion totals.[5]
To produce a national estimate of abortions at 15 weeks or later, Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) used data from the most recent abortion surveillance report from the CDC (2022).[6] Because CDC reports abortions occurring between 14–15 weeks as one lump sum, CLI reviewed state data from states that report abortions by individual week of gestation to determine that on average, 47% of abortions in the 14–15 week range occurred at 15 weeks in these states in 2022. [7] CLI then multiplied the CDC’s 14–15-week abortion total by 47% to estimate the number occurring at 15 weeks. CLI determined that of all abortions for which gestational age was reported to the CDC, approximately 6% occurred at 15 weeks of gestation or later. CLI applied that 6% to the most recent estimate from the Guttmacher Institute of total abortions in 2023. […]
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