The number of abortions performed each month is about the same as before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the nation’s right to abortion more than a year and a half ago, new report finds.
The latest edition of the #WeCount report conducted for the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization that promotes research on abortion and contraception, finds that between 81,150 and 88,620 abortions took place each month from July to September of last year, the most recent period for which survey results are available. These numbers are only slightly lower than the monthly average of about 86,800 from April to June 2022, before Roe and soon after it was overturned.
But abortion data is seasonal, and the same survey found more abortions in the United States in the spring months of 2023 than in the period a year before the court’s decision.
The report also notes that prescriptions for abortion pills via telemedicine have become common, accounting for about one in six abortions in the last three months of the survey results.
“Even when a state bans abortion, people continue to need and seek abortion care,” Alison Norris, a professor at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health and one of the co-presidents of the study. “We cannot let the overall and consistent number of abortions nationwide obscure the incredible unmet need and disastrous impact of abortion bans on people who already have the least access to them.”
The report estimates that if states had not been allowed to ban abortion, there would have been a total of 120,000 more during the survey period in the 14 states where all-stage abortion bans are now in effect of pregnancy.
While the number of monthly abortions has dropped to nearly zero in states with bans, they have increased in states that allow abortion, including Florida, Illinois and Kansas, which border states with bans.
The tracking effort collects monthly data from providers across the country, creating a snapshot of abortion trends after Roe v. Wade was overturned. In some states, some of the data is estimated. The effort makes data public with less than a six-month delay, providing a picture of trends much faster than annual reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the most recent report covers abortion in 2021.
The report does not cover self-managed abortions obtained outside the formal healthcare system, such as if someone receives the abortion pill from a friend without a doctor’s prescription.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling in June 2022 brought an immediate change in state policy. Currently, 14 states are enforcing abortion bans at all stages of pregnancy, and two others have bans that take effect after the first six weeks, often before women realize they are pregnant. Other Republican-controlled states have imposed lighter restrictions. The enforcement of some bans has been suspended by the courts.
Meanwhile, most Democratic-controlled states have taken steps to protect access to abortion. Many have executive orders or laws that seek to prevent states with bans from crossing state lines in abortion-related investigations. And five – Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont and Washington – have laws that seek to protect providers who provide abortion care via telemedicine.
The report’s total numbers include cases in which providers in those states prescribed medication abortion to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions on versions of the pill in the national count, but do not break down the number by state.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether mifepristone, one of the two drugs most commonly prescribed in combination to cause abortions, was properly approved.