Legal Abortions Down 6 Percent After Dobbs Ruling

In the six months since the Supreme Court's decision ending the right to an abortion, the number of legal abortions performed in the United States has dropped by just over 6%, exceeding what had been estimated by some researchers before the ruling, according to a new comprehensive report.

New restrictions, including travel, long wait times, and confusion over the laws, led to higher-than-expected numbers, The New York Times reported Wednesday, quoting the report from WeCount, through a research effort from the Society of Family Planning, a pro-abortion rights organization.

"The barriers that were in place were not surmountable," Alison Norris, an Ohio State professor of epidemiology and one of the report's authors said, adding that even though many clinics expanded their capacities, it was still "insufficient to manage the losses."

The report, released Tuesday, shows information that was gathered by Dec. 31, with 13 states by that time having banned abortions without allowing nearly any exceptions, and with Georgia banning abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.

The information came from collected abortion counts from 83% of the country's clinics, hospitals, and telehealth providers, and when places did not provide data, the group determined changes through trends for nearby clinics and the use of historical data.

In states with total bans, legal abortions dropped to almost zero, meaning an average decrease of about 7,300 abortions a month compared with April and May. However abortions increased by an average of 2,100 a month in states where abortions were still legal, showing that some women likely traveled across state lines, but this offset only one-third of the decrease in the states with abortion bans.

However, the number of abortions could continue to drop. Another state, Florida, is expected to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but now allows abortion through the 15th week.

The number of legal abortions could drop even more after a federal court in Texas banned the drug mifepristone, one of the pills used in the two-drug method for medication abortions.

The report also doesn't include the number of people who have ordered pills from other countries, with previous estimates suggesting that more than 6,500 women a month are buying the medication that way. It is not certain, though, how many of those requests end in terminated pregnancies.

Meanwhile, abortions also dropped significantly in states like Georgia, where abortions dropped by 40% with the law outlawing procedures after the sixth week of pregnancy.

And even where courts overturned proposed bans, legal abortions dropped, including in Arizona, which bans abortions after 15 weeks. Several clinics were closed temporarily while courts were determining that an abortion ban enacted before Arizona became a state could be enforced, and the number of abortions dropped by 85% to 230 procedures between April and July. Abortions in Arizona rose again by December to 870.

A six-week abortion rule in Ohio that took effect in June left the number of abortions to fall by 62% from before the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, but after the ban was overturned in September the number of abortions in the state climbed back up to 1,400 abortions a month. Arizona and Ohio did not experience a return to pre-Dobbs levels.

The data shows that thousands of women are still traveling long distances for abortions, but women who are poor, Black, or Hispanic were more likely to be deterred by the costs to travel, the report showed.

Abortions increased substantially in states that are near states with bans, with the largest increase in procedures taking place in Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina, but in states in regions where abortions stayed legal, such as the West Coast and the Northeast, the numbers didn't change.

But if Florida's legislature imposes a six-week ban, as is expected, that would decrease abortion access for women from other southern states with strict restrictions or bans.

The researchers acknowledged that the data was incomplete, including from Florida, where fewer than half of the clinics submitted complete numbers for the report.