Why People Have Abortions?

People rarely talk about their abortions openly. But the decision happens more often than most people imagine — and the reasoning behind it is far more layered, practical, and deeply human than any political debate has ever honestly captured.

In 2026, over a million abortions take place in the United States every year. The most recent data estimates that more than one million abortions — specifically 1,142,970 occurred in the U.S. in 2024, and there were more than half a million abortions in the first six months of 2025 alone. The Keim Centers Behind every one of those numbers is a real person, navigating a real situation, making a real decision based on the full reality of their life.

This article breaks down exactly why people choose abortion — not in talking points, not in ideology, but in the honest language of lived experience and peer-reviewed research. Every reason covered here is valid. Every person who had one deserves to be understood, not judged.

If you are currently facing an unplanned pregnancy and weighing your options, you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Reasons for Abortion Are Not Singular

The single most important thing research tells us about abortion decisions is that they almost never come down to one reason alone.

The decision to have an abortion is typically motivated by multiple, diverse, and interrelated reasons. The themes of responsibility to others and resource limitations — such as financial constraints and lack of partner support — recurred throughout the Guttmacher Institute’s landmark study of abortion patients.

In that study — a structured survey of 1,209 abortion patients across 11 large providers — nearly 9 in 10 people cited at least two reasons for their decision. The average number of reasons given was four. Common combinations included financial pressure, concerns about how the pregnancy would impact work or education, and fears about raising a child without adequate support — all landing simultaneously, all shaping one decision together.

This is what makes the political narrative around abortion so consistently inaccurate. Real life doesn’t sort itself into clean, single-reason categories. It is the compounded weight of financial reality, relationship context, existing responsibilities, personal values, and future goals all pressing on one person at once — and that person doing their best to make the most responsible choice they can.

Personal Factors

The vast majority of abortion decisions are rooted in deeply personal circumstances — the kind that outsiders rarely see and that no policy brief can fully capture. These are the most frequently cited reasons, drawn from decades of research.

Relationship Trouble

Nearly half — 48% — of people seeking abortions report relationship issues or not wanting to become a single parent as a key factor in their decision.

This covers an enormous range of real situations. Some people are in relationships that are ending. Some are with partners they don’t trust to co-parent safely. Some are navigating relationships that have turned abusive — where reproductive coercion, meaning a partner sabotaging birth control or pressuring a pregnancy, is a real and documented factor in unintended pregnancy.

Recognizing that a relationship is not stable, safe, or capable of supporting a child is not a failure of commitment. It is an honest, courageous act of clarity. Bringing a child into an unsafe or unstable situation doesn’t protect anyone — least of all the child. Choosing not to do that is responsibility, not avoidance.

Already Parenting

This is one of the most consistently misunderstood facts about who chooses abortion: more than half of people who have abortions are already parents.

These are not people unfamiliar with what raising a child requires. These are people with direct, daily, firsthand knowledge of what parenthood costs — in time, energy, money, emotional capacity, and attention. They have done the honest math on what adding another child to that reality would mean — for themselves, and for the children they are already raising.

Choosing abortion in order to be a better, more present, more financially stable parent to the children you already have is not a rejection of parenthood. It is parenthood — the kind that puts the wellbeing of real, existing children first.

Plans and Timing

The most frequently cited reasons were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work, or ability to care for dependents — cited by 74% of abortion patients in the Guttmacher Institute’s study.

This encompasses a wide spectrum of real-life situations: the college student mid-degree without access to childcare or parental support; the person who just started a job that has no paid parental leave; the single parent of two already stretched thin across multiple responsibilities; the person caring for an aging parent who cannot take on another dependent.

These are not timing preferences. They are real-world collisions between a pregnancy and a life that was already fully committed elsewhere. The people making this calculation are not choosing convenience — they are making an honest judgment about which responsibilities they can actually fulfill, and honoring the ones they already have.

Financial Insecurity

73% of people who had abortions cited financial insecurity as a key reason — specifically that they could not afford a baby at the time of their pregnancy.

This is not abstract worry about money. This is people running the actual numbers on their actual lives.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 at approximately $233,000 — before college. Childbirth itself costs an average of $13,000–$18,000 even with insurance. Infant childcare in many U.S. cities now exceeds $20,000 per year. For people already living close to the edge — which describes a significant portion of the American population in 2026 — this arithmetic is not pessimism. It is precision.

Choosing abortion because you genuinely cannot afford to parent a child well is not selfishness. It is an act of economic clarity that often directly protects the quality of life of the children already in your care.

Lack of Support

Many people who choose abortion do so because they are honest with themselves about how little support they have access to — not just financially, but emotionally, practically, and relationally.

Working multiple jobs with no access to affordable childcare. Being a caregiver to another family member who needs you. Having no partner, no family nearby, and no community safety net. These are not edge-case circumstances — they are the lived reality of millions of Americans, and choosing not to add a child to that equation without adequate support is a considered, responsible decision.

Political Factors

While most abortion decisions are driven primarily by personal circumstances, the political environment in 2026 has become an increasingly direct factor in how, when, and whether people are able to access the care they’ve decided on.

Abortion Bans and Restrictions

The 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturned nearly 50 years of federal abortion protection under Roe v. Wade — and the landscape in 2026 is dramatically more restrictive than it was four years ago.

The monthly average number of abortions steadily increased from 88,180 abortions per month in 2023 to 95,250 abortions in 2024 to 98,630 in 2025 — driven largely by expanded telehealth capacity, the ability to mail medication abortion pills, and lower costs for telehealth abortions through virtual clinics.

But that national increase obscures a deeply uneven reality. In the first six months of 2025, 74,490 people traveled to states without total bans to obtain abortion care — an 8% decline compared to the same period in 2024, likely reflecting a shift toward medication abortion via shield law provision in states with total bans.

The burden of navigating these restrictions — the travel, the cost, the time off work, the childcare for existing children — falls disproportionately on people with the fewest resources. Access inequality is itself a shaping force on abortion decisions in 2026, pushing people to act sooner, seek care differently, or confront barriers that were not there three years ago.

Distrust in the System

Some people choose abortion because they do not trust the healthcare or political systems in place to support them through pregnancy or parenthood — and that distrust is not irrational.

Black and Indigenous pregnant people in the United States face maternal mortality rates that are two to three times higher than those of white pregnant people. People without insurance or in rural areas face significant barriers to quality prenatal care. Marginalized communities have experienced systemic failures in reproductive healthcare across generations. For people who have witnessed or experienced these failures firsthand, the calculation about whether to continue a pregnancy takes on an entirely different dimension — one that goes well beyond personal preference.

Medical Risk

A portion of abortions in the United States occur because continuing the pregnancy would pose serious risks to the health or life of the pregnant person — or because the pregnancy itself has been diagnosed with a condition incompatible with survival after birth.

Medical reasons for abortion include:

• Ectopic pregnancy — A pregnancy implanted outside the uterus that cannot result in a live birth and becomes life-threatening without intervention. Abortion or equivalent medical treatment is the only option.
• Severe maternal health conditions — Including severe preeclampsia, kidney failure, heart disease, and cancer treatment requirements that make continuing a pregnancy dangerous or medically impossible.
• Fetal anomalies incompatible with life — Diagnoses where the fetus has conditions that cannot sustain life after birth. These are often deeply wanted pregnancies. These decisions carry grief that is almost impossible to describe from the outside.
• Serious obstetric complications — Including premature rupture of membranes, severe infection, or placental conditions that endanger the pregnant person’s life.

For people in these situations, abortion is not a preference — it is a medical necessity. The political framing that treats abortion as purely elective erases this reality entirely, and the people who live it deserve to be seen.

Sexual Assault

Some people who seek abortions became pregnant as a result of rape or incest. For survivors, abortion is often a critical and necessary part of the path toward healing, safety, and reclaiming bodily autonomy after profound violation.

These individuals are already carrying trauma. The idea that they should be legally required to continue a pregnancy that began with violence — a reality in several U.S. states in 2026 that lack meaningful exceptions for rape and incest — compounds that trauma in ways that are difficult to overstate.

Beyond the direct harm, states that do require documentation of sexual assault to access abortion exceptions create an additional barrier: forcing survivors to prove their own violation in order to access medical care. It is re-traumatizing by design.

No person should be forced to carry a pregnancy that originated in violence done to them. This is not a complicated position. It is a basic recognition of human dignity.

There’s No Wrong Reason to Have an Abortion

The data is consistent across decades and across research methodologies: the people who choose abortion almost universally feel it was the right decision for them.

One week after the abortion, the chances that women felt it was the right decision was 97.5 percent. Five years later, the likelihood increased to 99 percent. The emotion most commonly reported over the course of the study was relief — even five years later.

The main finding of the Turnaway Study is that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health, and family outcomes.

People can experience the emotion of regret and still feel like they made the right decision about having an abortion — “I regret that I was in the position where I needed an abortion. But given that I was, I’m glad I had it.”

Emotional complexity after an abortion is real and completely normal. What the research does not support is the political claim that regret and long-term psychological harm are the dominant outcomes. They are not.

Whether the reason is financial, relational, medical, circumstantial, or simply personal — there is no wrong reason to have an abortion. The person making the decision is the only one with full access to the context, values, and reality that make their situation what it is. They deserve accurate information, genuine support, and zero judgment.

If you’re in the middle of making this decision right now, you don’t have to navigate it alone.

Our full pillar guide — Unplanned Pregnancy: Understanding All Your Options  is a judgment-free starting point.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the number one reason people have abortions?
According to the Guttmacher Institute’s research, the most commonly cited reasons are financial — about 73% say they cannot afford a baby — and timing-related, with about 74% saying the pregnancy would interfere with education, work, or care of existing dependents. Most people cite multiple reasons simultaneously, with an average of four reasons per person.

2. Do most people regret having an abortion?
Research strongly indicates they do not. Relief was the most common emotion felt by women following abortion, and negative emotions or decision regret did not emerge or increase over time. Insight Lawrence The Turnaway Study found that 99% of participants felt it was the right decision five years later.

3. Are most people who have abortions already parents?
Yes — more than half of abortion patients in the United States are already parents. These are people with direct experience of what raising a child requires, making a considered decision about whether they can responsibly do it again.

4. Is financial pressure a valid reason to have an abortion?
Absolutely. Financial insecurity is one of the most commonly cited and most thoroughly documented reasons for abortion. The cost of raising a child to age 18 in the U.S. is approximately $233,000 — before college. Recognizing that you cannot provide that stability is honest, responsible, and valid.

5. Can someone have an abortion for medical reasons even in states with bans?
Most states with abortion bans include exceptions for life-threatening medical emergencies, though the language of those exceptions varies and is often vague in practice. In reality, many patients and providers report significant confusion about when exceptions legally apply.