Women are circumventing state abortion bans, with increasing numbers

Despite the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions in the U.S. has not gone down, according to a new report.

The latest data comes from the Society for Family Planning’s WeCount project, according to The Hill.

The rise could be attributable to the recent growth in telemedicine, which reportedly accounted for 19 percent of abortions nationwide from the time of the Supreme Court’s ruling until December, the report said.

The rise occurred even in states that have a near-total ban on abortion.

The study showed that nearly 8,000 people per month obtained abortion pills in states with bans or heavy restrictions from October through December of 2023, due to clinics operating under shield laws.

“Access to medication abortion through telehealth continues to play an ever-increasing role in abortion care nationwide — even as the Supreme Court weighs the fate of telehealth abortion care,” said WeCount representative Ushma Upadhyay.

CNN reported that in the last few months of 2023, nearly one in five abortions were affected, due to shield laws that provided wide access to abortion pills.

The Biden administration changed access rules during the COVID-19 panic to provide broader access to abortion pills, including mifepristone and misoprostol, which were approved for use by the FDA more than 20 years ago. The drugs have been approved for use through the tenth week of pregnancy.

But during the pandemic, the FDA loosened rules. Previously, patients were required to visit a clinic in person. But starting in 2021, the government permitted patients to use remote screening or mail-order pharmacies.

As The Hill added, by 2023, “providers in states with shield laws were prescribing abortion pills to an average of 5,800 people a month in states with total abortion bans or six-week abortion bans.”

The WeCount report found that there was an average of 86,000 abortions per month in 2023, whereas in 2022 there were only 82,000 per month, excluding those provided through shield law telemedicine.

“In the 15 states with total or six-week abortion bans, #WeCount estimates that more than 180,000 abortions would have likely been obtained via providers in these states since Dobbs, had abortion not been banned,” the report said.

It said the states with the greatest cumulative declines in abortion volume since the Supreme Court decisions include Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama.

Despite the overall rise in abortions, WeCount representative still decried the bans in several states.

“Even as the total national number of abortions nationally has increased, we can’t lose sight of the fact that access to in-person abortion care has virtually disappeared in states where abortion is banned,” insisted WeCount co-chair Alison Norris.

“The loss of clinic-based care — which makes up more than 80% of abortion care — is a devastating loss to access for people across wide swaths of the country,” Norris added.

However, despite the eased rules for telehealth and mail-order abortifacients, those outlets could still face restrictions in the courts.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could end up putting heavy limits on access to mifepristone.