A common argument among many progressives, and even some conservatives, is that alarm about our liberal abortion regime is misguided or exaggerated because abortion rates have continued to fall for decades. In 2020, NBC argued that “abortion restrictions . . . aren’t a primary driver in the national decline of abortion rates” because “according to the most recent national data, the United States now has the lowest abortion rate since Roe v. Wade.” Writing at the Dispatch the same year, David French wrote that “the abortion rate and ratio continues to fall, and it’s fallen dramatically.” It’s a point that French makes often, as evidence for his argument that things are not as bad as many social conservatives seem to think. In February 2021, he reiterated:

The longer I’ve been engaged in the quest to eliminate abortion from the United States of America, the more I’ve become convinced that the core challenge rests not on the supply side—the availability of legal abortion access—but rather on the demand side. In other words, a nation or state that wants legal abortion will have legal abortion. And even in a nation or state that severely restricts abortion access, women who want abortion will find a way.
In fact, I’d argue that the best explanation for the long-term decline in the abortion rate is primarily decreased demand. The available data indicates that America’s abortion rate is now lower than it was when Roe was decided, when abortion was illegal in most American states. . . . Though there is evidence that the abortion rate increased slightly in 2018 (reporting on abortion rates tends to take time), the long-term trend is deeply encouraging. After an initial and expected surge in abortion rates after Roe legalized abortion from coast-to-coast, the rate has declined through every single American presidency, pro-life and pro-choice.
The bottom line is clear—there is no reason for pro-life Americans to simply presume this forty-year positive trend will change and every reason to believe that the most effective forms of pro-life engagement can and will continue, even under a Biden presidency.

These trends, French argued, were proof that we live in “a nation that increasingly dislikes abortion.” But newer data call that thesis into question. Last month’s study from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which has been tracking the national abortion rate for years, found that “the long-term decline in abortions in the United States that started 30 years ago has reversed . . . according to new findings from Guttmacher’s latest Abortion Provider Census—the most comprehensive data collection effort on abortion provision in the United States—there were 8% more abortions in 2020 than in 2017.” It’s not just the raw rate, either, but the ratio of abortions to pregnancies: “The abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 100 pregnancies) increased from 18.4% in 2017 to 20.6% in 2020, a 12% increase,” Guttmacher reports. “The number of abortions increased in all four regions of the country between 2017 and 2020. The rise was largest in the West (12% increase) and Midwest (10% increase); abortions increased 8% in the South and 2% in the Northeast.”

There is evidence that the abortion rate has continued to creep up over the past few years: “National abortion figures in 2017 reached their lowest level since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions,” NBC reported last November. But “they rose 1 percent in 2018. The next year, the numbers increased 2 percent and the rate per 1,000 women of child-bearing age rose 1 percent.”

The explanation for this increase is surely complex and multicausal—well above my pay grade. But at the very least, it undermines the argument that abortion has become less of an issue in America over the past few decades—and underscores the enduring importance of an energetic pro-life movement.