Family planning and healthcare provider Planned Parenthood provides abortions at some of its locations. A new CDC report shows the number of abortions in the U.S. has declined in recent years. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The number of abortions in the United States fell by 2 percent each year since 2006, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency recorded nearly 640,000 abortions in 2015, the last year it registered abortion data in the U.S, come down from more than 840,000 in 2006. The CDC report excluded data from California, Maryland and New Hampshire.


A significant dip in abortions, of 26 percent, occurred among women age 15 to 44 since 2006.

"Unintended pregnancy is the major contributor to induced abortion," the report reads. "Increasing access to and use of effective contraception can reduce unintended pregnancies and further reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States."

RELATED Federal judge strikes down controversial Mississippi abortion ban

Abortion rates varied across racial, economic and age groups.

"Throughout the years, the incidence of abortion has varied considerably across subpopulations and remains higher in certain demographic groups than others," the CDC report reads.

In 2015, women in their twenties saw the highest abortion rates. That year, white and black women combined for 73 percent of those abortions, with 25.1 abortions per 1,000 black women and nearly 7 per 1,000 white women.

According to the CDC, the rate between both groups narrowed between 1994 and 2008 but held firm from 2008 and 2014.

A 2017 analysis in the American Journal of Public Health predicted nearly 1 in 4 women between 15 to 44 years old in 2014 would have an abortion by 45.

"The more we know about those having abortions, the better enabled we will be to meet their reproductive health needs," Rachel Jones, lead author of the American Journal of Public Health analysis, said in a statement last year.