Abortions have increased since Roe was overturned, mostly from telehealth
There were more abortions in the U.S. during the first three months of this year than the same period in 2023, according to a new report, continuing a trend of increasing abortions ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed dozens of states to enact bans and restrictions.
The national monthly number of in-person abortions from January to March 2024 was about the same as in that period in 2023, meaning the increase was mostly driven by telehealth abortions, according to the report from the #WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning.
The report comes ahead of the November elections, where Democrats across the country are campaigning on abortion rights, and some voters in red and blue states alike will have the opportunity to enshrine state-level abortion protections.
Telehealth abortions represent 20 percent of all abortions nationally, and shield laws have played a major role. Six states enacted laws that provide legal protections to clinicians who offer telehealth abortion care to people in states that have abortion or telehealth bans.
According to the reports, doctors in states with shield laws prescribed abortion pills to nearly 10,000 patients in states with bans or restrictions on abortion by telehealth.
In the nine months from July 2023 to March 2024, more than 65,000 people in states with total or six-week bans and states with telehealth restrictions have accessed medication abortion provided under shield laws, the report found.
But the overall increase doesn’t tell the whole story, said Alison Norris, a professor at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health and a co-chair of #WeCount.
“People can be a little placated and say, well, it looks like people are getting their abortions and not recognize that there are thousands and thousands of people who aren’t getting abortions in their own community,” Norris said.
“Telehealth abortion is super important and an increasingly important part of the ecosystem, but 80 percent of abortion care is provided in person, and many people either need in-person care or prefer in-person care, and so we’re still living in very unjust circumstance where thousands of people who need an abortion cannot get one in the community where they live,” she added.
The survey found that the number of abortions fell to nearly zero in the 14 states that ban abortion in all stages of pregnancy.
Four others bar it after about six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. Those states saw abortions drop by about half, the survey found.
The states with the greatest cumulative declines in abortion volume over the 21 months since Roe was overturned are Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama.
The quarterly #WeCount report found a monthly average of nearly 99,000 abortions in the first three months of this year. January was the first time since the survey began that it has counted more than 100,000 abortions across the country in a single month.
The states with the largest average number of abortions per month included California, New York, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey.
The increased numbers of abortions in states that permit abortion likely represent a combination of people traveling from states where they cannot access care and increased abortions among residents.
Florida enacted a six-week abortion ban on May 1, so the impact of that new law isn’t measured in the report. But it’s likely to have far-reaching impacts, given the relatively high number of abortions in that state and the total abortion bans in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
Abortions notably increased in states such as Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico, which protect abortion and border states that have bans.
Norris said it’s important not to lose sight of the “heavy burden” abortion bans have on people living in those states.
While some can travel or obtain medication, many others need in-person care and can’t access it and have been forced to carry a pregnancy to term. Because of total abortion bans or six-week bans, at least 208,000 fewer abortions were provided in-person.
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