Declines in Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 2008–2011

The rate of unintended pregnancy in the United States increased slightly between 2001 and 2008 and is higher than that in many other industrialized countries. National trends have not been reported since 2008.

We calculated rates of pregnancy for the years 2008 and 2011 according to women's and girls' pregnancy intentions and the outcomes of those pregnancies. We obtained data on pregnancy intentions from the National Survey of Family Growth and a national survey of patients who had abortions, data on births from the National Center for Health Statistics, and data on induced abortions from a national census of abortion providers; the number of miscarriages was estimated using data from the National Survey of Family Growth.