There were more abortions in the U.S. during the first three months of this year than in the same period in 2023, according to a new report, continuing a trend of rising abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. to enact prohibitions and restrictions.
The national monthly number of in-person abortions from January to March 2024 was about the same as that period in 2023, meaning the increase was driven primarily by telehealth abortions, according to the Family Planning Society’s #WeCount project report .
The report comes ahead of the November elections, where Democrats across the country are campaigning for abortion rights, and some voters in both red and blue states will have the opportunity to enshrine abortion protections at the state level.
Telehealth abortions account for 20% of all abortions nationally, and protective laws have played an important role. Six states have enacted laws that provide legal protections to doctors who provide telehealth abortion care to people in states that prohibit abortion or telehealth.
According to reports, doctors in states with protection laws have prescribed abortion pills to nearly 10,000 patients in states with bans or restrictions on telehealth abortions.
In the nine months from July 2023 to March 2024, more than 65,000 people in states with full or six-week bans and states with telehealth restrictions had access to medication abortion provided under protective laws, the report found.
But the overall increase doesn’t tell the whole story, said Alison Norris, a professor at the Ohio State University College of Public Health and co-president of #WeCount.
“People might get a little placated and say, well, it looks like people are getting abortions and they don’t 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 need in-person care or prefer in-person care, and so we still live in very unfair circumstances. in which thousands of people who need an abortion are unable to get one in the community where they live”, he added.
The survey found that the number of abortions fell to nearly zero in the 14 states that ban abortions at all stages of pregnancy.
Another four ban it after about six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. These states saw the number of abortions drop by about half, the survey found.
The states with the biggest cumulative drops in abortion volume in 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 beginning of the research, that more than 100,000 abortions were recorded across the country in a single month.
States with the highest average number of abortions per month include California, New York, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey.
The increase in the number of abortions in states that allow abortion likely represents a combination of people traveling from states where they do not have access to care and an increase in abortions among residents.
Florida enacted a six-week abortion ban on May 1, so the impact of this new law is not measured in the report. But it is likely to have far-reaching impacts, given the relatively high number of abortions in that state and the blanket abortion bans in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
Abortions have risen notably in states like Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico that protect abortion and in border states that have bans.
Norris said it’s important not to lose sight of the “heavy burden” that abortion bans place on people living in these states.
While some can travel or obtain medication, many others need personal care and do not have access to it and are forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Due to an outright abortion ban or a six-week ban, at least 208,000 fewer abortions were performed in person.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
