Abortions up in 2023 despite bans, report finds
Bans haven’t deterred procedure in US
Abortions, particularly medication abortion, have increased in the United States in recent years despite bans prohibiting the procedure in more than a dozen states, according to a report published Tuesday.
More than 1 million abortions occurred in the formal U.S. healthcare system in 2023, the year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a monthly report from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
That is the highest number in more than a decade and a 10% increase since 2020, the report said. And the numbers are likely an undercount because they don’t include self-managed abortions that happen outside the health care system.
But experts said the increase does not mean it’s gotten easier to access abortion care. Rather, they said the increase in people traveling out of state indicates that financial and logistical burdens have grown for many patients and clinics that have to work harder to meet increased demand.
“Making abortion illegal does not make it less common. I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” said Jennifer Kerns, a professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the University of California, San Francisco. “What it does is it places incredible burdens on people who are going to access it and who need to access it.”
The number of abortions in the United States peaked in 1990 at 1.6 million and had been falling for several decades until the trend began to reverse in 2019. Almost every state without an abortion ban saw an increase in the number of abortions in 2023. In most states, the majority of the increase was driven by residents having more abortions, according to Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at Guttmacher.
But an increasing amount of
patients are traveling across state lines to have abortions as well, and states that shared a border with those that have enacted abortion bans – including Illinois, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina – saw particularly sharp increases, according to the report.
More than 160,000 people traveled out of state to have an abortion in 2023, more than double the number found in 2020, Maddow-Zimet said.
Medication abortion has been increasing steadily for years, and that trend continued in 2023, Maddow-Zimet said. Approximately 642,700 medication abortions took place last year, an increase from 53% of all abortions in 2020 to 63% in 2023, according to the report.
Recent changes that have made mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortion in the United States, more accessible may be driving this increase, Kerns said. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed the medication to be prescribed during telehealth appointments and delivered by mail since 2021. And earlier this year, CVS and Walgreens, two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, announced they will soon carry mifepristone in their stores.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments next week in a case that could increase restrictions on mifepristone.