This story is a part of Ask Alabama, where you ask the questions, you vote to decide which questions we answer, and then we investigate.

This week one of our readers asked: Much was made of abortion laws and regulations in the Senate special election. How many abortions take place in Alabama each year?

It's true, much was made of abortion laws and regulations during the special Senate election last year, which, going by the current pace of Alabama politics, seems like a very long time ago now.

The special election attracted national attention as sexual misconduct allegations came out against Republican candidate Roy Moore, a twice-removed chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. His response to the allegations was to accuse his Democratic rival Doug Jones of being a pro-choice radical.

Sen. Jones, who narrowly won the election, clarified his position by saying that he supported the status quo and the right for women to choose. In Alabama abortion is legal up to 20 weeks, although there are some state laws that ensure enforce counselling, ultrasound and limit where funding can come from. But something else happened not long before Sen. Jones swept to an unlikely victory. Alabama's annual abortion rate, which had been consistently declining since 2006, started to increase, according to the Alabama Center for Health Statistics, which released its 2016 abortions report in late 2017.

While abortions have fallen 41 percent since 2005, the earliest year that records were kept, a 13 percent jump from 2015 to 2016 has stopped 10 years of constant decline. In 2006, there were 11,654 abortions in the state. The number dropped from 8,080 in 2014 to 5,899 in 2015 and then increased in 2016 to 6,642 in 2016, the most recent figures available.

For more than 10 years Alabama's abortion rate slowly crept down, which was in line with other states and overall national trends. But why did it then pop back up?

Tessa Longbons, a research associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a Washington DC health think-tank, said that the increase can be explained by the closure of a high capacity abortion clinic.

"West Alabama Women's Center, Alabama's highest-volume abortion clinic, closed for the first half of 2015 due to an Alabama law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals," said Longbons in an email to AL.com. "The clinic closed in January 2015 and reopened in August 2015 under a waiver. West Alabama Women's Center reported 4,725 abortions in 2015, only 1,221 in 2015, and 3,339 in 2016, which likely contributed to the lower number of abortions reported in Alabama in 2015. The law was struck down in March 2016."

Longbons also said that another abortion clinic was operating in Central Alabama, but was abruptly shutdown, meaning that records were lost.

According to Longbons, many women from other states travel to Alabama for abortions, which can cause abortion rates to fluctuate. However, Alabama reports all abortions occurring in the state and all abortions occurring to Alabama residents (both in Alabama and in other states) separately. This makes it difficult to determine the actual number of non-resident women getting abortions in Alabama.

There were also around 1,900 chemical abortions performed in 2016, a six percent decline from 2012. That figure is included in the 6,642 abortions performed in 2016.



A chemical abortion, or medical abortion, is typically performed on women who are up to eight weeks pregnant and is done by taking two drugs via a pill.

So to recap, there were 6,642 abortions in 2016, the second lowest year on record since 2005. In total, there have been 139,808 abortions since 2005, which averages out to about 11,650 a year since over the last 12 years.

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