Today marks three years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The anti-abortion movement and the GOP have made the country more dangerous and more deadly for women, but, somehow, their delusional efforts to get rid of reproductive rights and force every woman in the country to have a million babies did not result in women not getting abortions. Crazy!
Despite 13 states that currently have a near-total abortion ban, there were 1.14 million abortions performed in the U.S. in 2024, the most performed since 2022, which is when #WeCount, a project from the Society of Family Planning, began tracking abortions. While the majority of abortions still took place in person, about 1 in 4 were provided via telehealth. This is largely thanks to shield laws, which have allowed more providers in states like New York to prescribe abortion pills to people in abortion-banned states like Texas.
“There’s more abortion taking place in Mississippi today than there was prior to Dobbs,” Dr. Angel Foster, a co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (Map), told the Guardian. “That really speaks to how little access some folks had to in-clinic abortion care prior to Dobbs and how shield law provision and telemedicine has really stepped into that space.”
Since Roe was overturned, eight states have enacted shield laws in order to protect providers from anti-abortion actions. Currently, both Texas and Louisiana are trying to punish Dr. Margaret Carpenter of New York—who they allege mailed abortion pills to people in their states—under their respective abortion bans. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has maintained that “there’s no way in hell” the state would extradite Carpenter.
New York also recently passed legislation to remove prescriber names from abortion pill bottles, as did Maine, Vermont, and Washington; Massachusetts is working on similar legislation.
So the Supreme Court, the GOP, and religious anti-abortion fanatics have not only failed at banning abortion, they’ve failed at decreasing it. But their modus operandi is, of course, not just about banning abortion—it’s about subjugating women and people who can get pregnant, and attempting to overturn any and all progress we’ve made in the past five decades. And in that vein, they’ve achieved a lot. Since Roe was overturned, here’s what they’ve managed:
- Infant mortality increased in states with abortion bans.
- Maternal mortality increased in states with abortion bans. White women are “nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth, compared to mothers living in supportive states where abortion was legal and accessible,” according to the report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Black women are 3.3 times more likely to die.
- Intimate partner violence increased in states with abortion bans. In 2023, in counties where people have to travel in order to receive abortion care, there was a 7-10% increase in intimate partner violence since 2017.
- At least 11 states have introduced legislation that would classify abortion as homicide.
- Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to defund Planned Parenthood, while also cutting funding and resources to departments researching maternal mortality outcomes and reproductive health; or just cutting those programs entirely.
- As funding for reproductive care gets slashed, funding for Crisis Pregnancy Centers—aka predatory, religious anti-abortion centers that pose as healthcare providers to target vulnerable pregnant women—are receiving unprecedented, and frankly outrageous, levels of state funding.
- GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Ohio, Montana, and Missouri have introduced legislation to further restrict abortion in their states, despite voters voting to protect abortion rights.
- The FDA recently announced it will investigate the abortion pill, after a bogus study was amplified by Sen. Josh Hawley, an anti-abortion ghoul.
IVF, birth control, and Plan B are also at risk of getting banned or restricted. Even more concerning, fetal personhood language—which would recognize embryos and fetuses as living people separate from the pregnant person—is becoming more and more common in proposed anti-abortion legislation. It’s clear that the anti-abortion movement’s ultimate goal is to get a fetal personhood case in front of the Supreme Court, just like they did with Dobbs.
Because, as activists have been warning for years, overturning Roe was never the endgame. It was only the beginning.
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