Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ensures legal access to abortion services. But four decades after Roe gave women the freedom to make their own reproductive choices, the reality for women in the U.S. isn’t so clear cut — even though more Americans now support legal abortion than ever before, abortion rights are under serious attack across the country. Here’s the current state of abortion rights in the U.S., by the numbers:
- 70: Percentage of Americans who now oppose overturning Roe, the highest number since 1989. Most religious groups also want to leave Roe in place.
- 135: Number of new state-level abortion restrictions enacted over the past two years. 2011 and 2012 represented the worst years for reproductive freedom since the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
- 87: Percentage of U.S. counties that don’t have an abortion clinic. At least four states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi — only have a single abortion clinic left.
- 45: By the time American women reach this age, nearly half of them will have had an unintended pregnancy at some point in their lives. About one in three will have had an abortion.
- 20: Number of states that allow insurers or employers to deny women affordable contraception by refusing to comply with Obamacare’s birth control mandate. Studies have shown that Obamacare’s contraception provision will help reduce the national abortion rate.
- $470: Average cost of a first-trimester abortion. Even though most of the women who have abortions have health insurance, the majority of women pay out of pocket to have an abortion.
- 42: Percentage of women who have abortions whose income levels fall below the federal poverty line. Seven out of ten women who have had an abortion would have preferred to have the procedure sooner, but many of them were forced to delay because they needed more time to raise the money for it.
- 0.3: Even fewer than this percentage of abortion patients experience complications from their procedure that require hospitalization. Studies have repeatedly shown that having an abortion is far safer than giving birth.
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