CDC: Rate of abortions in Georgia 10th highest in the country year Roe was overturned

ATLANTA — Georgia had the 10th highest rate of abortions performed in the country in 2022, according to federal data released Wednesday.

Abortions were performed in Georgia at a rate of 17.2 per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to data shared by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC collected information from 48 “reporting areas,” which included most states, New York City and Washington, D.C.

California, Maryland, New Hampshire and New Jersey did not share information. Participation in the CDC “abortion surveillance” program is voluntary.

New Mexico had the highest rate of abortions of those that shared data with the CDC at 28.8 abortions per 1,000 women. Missouri had the lowest at 0.1.

These figures were collected the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that guaranteed the national right to an abortion. The high court overturned Roe in June 2022, and Georgia’s strict abortion law was enacted that July.

Georgia’s law bans most abortions after a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant.

That means that for the first half of 2022, abortions were legal in the state up until about 22 weeks of pregnancy. Now, 99% of abortions performed in Georgia are done before six weeks.

According to the CDC, there were more than 38,000 abortions performed in Georgia in 2022. Of those, about 8,000, or nearly 21%, were not Georgia residents.

That’s not surprising, said state Sen. Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who in 2019 sponsored what became the state’s abortion law. He referred to Georgia as a “magnet state.”

“It’s a circumstance where the billion dollar abortion industry had a foothold in Georgia,” Setzler said. “It’s a place where they believed that the taking of unborn life was easiest and most profitable, and they put their resources here for years.”

Georgia saw a jump in abortions performed here after a Texas law took effect in 2021 banning most abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity. Until the Georgia law took effect in July 2022, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were among the Southern states with the most relaxed abortion laws.

In the first seven months of 2022, roughly 4,000 abortions were performed each month in Georgia. Since the law took effect, abortions are being performed at an average of about 2,200 per month, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.

The DPH shared the state’s 2022 abortion numbers last year, saying there were about 35,000 abortions performed on Georgians. That’s about 5,000 more than are accounted for in the CDC data. But Georgia’s numbers include abortions performed on Georgians who traveled to other states. In 2022, DPH data showed there were about 4,600 abortions performed in other states.