Abortion prevented a number of births equal to nearly 30 percent of live births during the Generation Z birth years. Meanwhile, Generation Z is the generation most likely to support abortion. Generation Z consists of Americans born between 1997 and 2012. Approximately 71 million members of this generation were living in the United States as of 2025–2026, making it one of the country’s two largest living generations, behind Millennials.
Between 1997 and 2012, an estimated 19–20 million pregnancies ended in legal abortion.
The annual number of abortions peaked at nearly 1.6 million around 1990 before declining for more than two decades. By 2020, however, the number had begun rising again, reaching roughly 930,000.
Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, estimates from the Guttmacher Institute and the Society of Family Planning placed the annual total above 1 million again. The organizations estimated approximately 1.03–1.14 million abortions annually in 2023 and 2024.
For comparison, consider the abortion figures for Baby Boomers and Generation X.
Generation X consists of people born between 1965 and 1980. The United States recorded roughly 58–60 million live births during those years. Legal abortion increased and then stabilized following the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Guttmacher Institute estimates place the number of abortions during this period at approximately 15–18 million.
Baby Boomers, consisting of people born between 1946 and 1964, accounted for roughly 76 million live births in the United States. Abortion was illegal in nearly every state throughout the entire Baby Boom period, since the Supreme Court did not legalize abortion nationwide until its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, nine years after the last Boomer was born. Guttmacher Institute estimates place the number of illegal abortions during this period at approximately 13–15 million, within a wide range of 3.8 million to 22.8 million, depending on the historical estimate used.
Baby Boomers experienced the lowest abortion-to-birth ratio of the three generations, at roughly 18 percent, compared with approximately 28 percent for Generation X and nearly 30 percent for Generation Z.
Like so many leftist policies, Generation Z’s stance on abortion is Darwinian. The generation that was cut by nearly a third by abortion is largely in favor of it. That would be like Baby Boomers supporting heart attacks.
Recent polling shows that Generation Z is more supportive of legal abortion than older generations. According to a 2026 Pew Research Center survey, 66 percent of Americans ages 18–29 said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 34 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases. By comparison, approximately 57 percent of Americans ages 50 and older supported legal abortion in all or most cases.
Polling also shows a gender divide within Generation Z. A 2025 survey by The 19th News and SurveyMonkey found that 76 percent of Generation Z women wanted abortion to be legal, including 45 percent who said it should be legal in all cases. Among Generation Z men, 59 percent supported legal abortion, including 24 percent who said it should be legal in all cases.
Abortion is also a voting issue for members of Generation Z, particularly women. PRRI found that Generation Z adults were more likely than members of older generations to say they would vote only for candidates who shared their views on abortion.
As with everything else involving liberals, there is a racial component, although there appears to be no connection to climate change. Liberals are fond of complaining when the outcomes of any policy or situation do not match the census pie chart, yet they remain silent about the fact that abortion disproportionately kills Black children.
CDC data show large racial and ethnic disparities in abortion. In reporting areas that provided race and ethnicity data for 2022, non-Hispanic Black women accounted for 39.5 percent of reported abortions. For general population context, Black Americans represented approximately 13.6 percent of the U.S. population in 2022, although the two figures measure different populations.
Liberals also love championing diversity. However, because the abortion rate among non-Hispanic Black women was more than four times the rate among non-Hispanic White women throughout the Generation Z birth period, abortion eliminated a larger share of the potential Black Generation Z population and, to a lesser extent, the potential Hispanic population. So much for diversity.
Ad block users: Some site features may not work correctly while an ad blocker is enabled, because they break scripts and content this website depends on. If you can’t see comments below, for example, please disable your ad blocker.
