Abortions Increased After Dobbs, But Researchers Warn People Are Still Being Denied Care
“My biggest fear is people will take away from these new numbers that everything’s fine,” Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, who helped collect and analyze abortion data from January through March, told Jezebel.
Photo: AbortionPolitics
June marked the second anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which has led to almost half of all states imposing total or near-total abortion bans. But on the national level, the number of monthly abortions increased since Dobbs, according to the latest #WeCount report from the Society for Family Planning released on Wednesday. Researchers found that, from January through March this year, the abortion rate increased slightly compared to the same period last year. There were an average of 98,990 abortions per month during the first quarter of 2024, which is 14% higher than the monthly average from the first quarter of 2023.
The #WeCount report attributes this largely to the availability of medication abortion through telemedicine—including in states that have banned abortion—and so-called shield laws in six states, which protect abortion providers from prosecution for remotely prescribing abortion pills to people where abortion is banned. Since July 2023, six states have enacted shield laws, which #WeCount’s report links to a surge in self-managed medication abortions via telemedicine: In March, doctors in states with shield laws remotely prescribed medication abortion to almost 10,000 patients in states with bans, accounting for a tenth of all abortions in the nation.
Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine professor who co-leads #WeCount, told Jezebel telemedicine expands access to abortion on multiple fronts, on top of removing travel barriers. “Even before Dobbs, cost has always been the greatest barrier. Telehealth is available at a much lower cost, and some providers offer it free to people in states that have banned abortion,” Upadhyay said. Telemedicine also opens up greater availability in “surge states,” or states where abortion is legal that has absorbed an influx of out-of-state patients since Dobbs. If people can access abortion remotely, that opens up “greater availability for in-person appointments,” she explained.
Still, Upadhyay stressed that these numbers present an incomplete picture. “My biggest fear is people will take away from these new numbers that everything’s fine, everyone can get abortion, and they don’t have to pay attention,” she said. There are still “many reasons people can’t get abortions in states with bans—it can be too difficult or costly to travel, they can’t get child care, they don’t know about options for telehealth or abortion pills.” Many people living under bans may be too afraid of violating those laws, Upadhyay added. Many are adolescents, who “face the greatest barriers.”