Report shows US states with abortion bans see rates similar to Roe v. Wade

The report released Tuesday found that women living in states with abortion bans were having the procedure in the second half of 2023 at roughly the same rate as before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade United States.

She says women did this by traveling out of state or having prescription abortion pills mailed to them #WeCount report from the Family Planning Society, which advocates for access to abortion. The report found they increasingly used telehealth as providers in states with laws designed to protect them from prosecution in other states used online visits to prescribe abortion pills.

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“Abortion bans do not eliminate the need for abortion,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco and co-chair of the #WeCount poll. “People jump over these hurdles because they have to.”

Abortion patterns have changed

The #WeCount report began a monthly survey of abortion providers across the country just before Roe was overturned, creating a snapshot of abortion trends. In some states, some data is estimated. As part of this effort, data is released to the public with a lag of less than six months, providing a snapshot of trends much sooner than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose latest annual report covers abortion in 2021.

The report describes rapid changes since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which struck down the nation’s abortion law and opened the door to enforcement of state bans.

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The number of abortions in states with bans at all stages of pregnancy has dropped to almost zero. It also declined in states where bans begin around six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women realize they are pregnant.

However, the nationwide total was about the same or higher than before the ruling. The study estimates that 99,000 abortions occurred each month in the first half of 2024, compared with 81,000 per month from April to December 2022 and 88,000 in 2023.

One reason is telehealth, which gained popularity when some Democratic-controlled states last year began implementing laws aimed at protecting prescribers. The report found that in April 2022, approximately 1 in 25 abortions resulted from pills prescribed via telehealth. In June 2024, it was 1 in 5.

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The latest report is the first time #WeCount has broken down abortion pill prescription numbers by state. About half of telehealth abortion pill prescriptions currently go to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions on telehealth abortion prescriptions.

For example, in the second half of last year, the pills were sent monthly to about 2,800 women in Texas, more than 1,500 in Mississippi and almost 800 in Missouri.

Travel is still the primary means of access for women in states with bans

Data from another group, the Guttmacher Institute, show that women in states with bans still primarily travel to get abortions.

By combining the results of both surveys and comparing them to Guttmacher’s data on in-person abortions in 2020, #WeCount found that women in states with a throughout-pregnancy ban had abortions at similar rates as in 2020. The numbers do not include pills obtained from outside the medical system in an earlier period, when these prescriptions most often came from abroad. They also do not include people who received the pills but did not take them.

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For example, West Virginia women had nearly 220 abortions per month in the second half of 2023, mostly by traveling, up from 2020, when they had about 140 abortions per month. For Louisiana residents, the number of monthly abortions was about the same, at just under 700 from July to December 2023, largely as a result of the shield law, and 635 in 2020. However, Oklahomans had fewer abortions in 2023, and the monthly number dropped below 470 from around 690 in 2020.

Telehealth providers quickly emerged

One of the main providers of telehealth pills is the Massachusetts Abortion Access Project. Co-founder Angel Foster said that since its launch in September 2023 until last month, the group was prescribing the drugs to about 500 patients a month, mostly in states with bans.

The group charged $250 per person, while allowing people to pay less if they couldn’t afford it. Starting this month, using grants to cover operating costs, it’s trying a different approach: setting the price at $5 but telling patients they’ll appreciate more for those who can pay it. Foster said the group is on track to provide 1,500 to 2,000 abortions a month with the up-to-date model.

Foster called the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision “a human rights and social justice disaster,” while also saying that “there is irony in what has happened in the post-Dobbs landscape.”

“In some places, abortion care is more available and cheaper than before,” she said.

There are no major legal challenges to the shield laws so far, but abortion opponents have tried to force a major pill to be withdrawn from the market. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld access to the drug mifepristone while ruling that a group of doctors and anti-abortion groups had no standing to challenge the drug’s federal approval in 2000.

This month, three states asked a judge for permission to file a lawsuit aimed at reversing federal decisions this has enabled easier access to pills – including via telehealth.