And in spite of all that...
Despite bans, legal abortions didn’t fall after dobbs
In the year after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, something unexpected happened: The total number of legal abortions in the United States did not fall. Instead, it appeared to increase slightly, by about 0.2 percent, according to the first full-year count of abortions provided nationwide.
This finding came despite the fact that 14 states banned all abortions, and seven imposed new limits on them. Even as those restrictions reduced the legal abortion rate to near zero in some states, there were large increases in places where abortions remained legal. Researchers said they were driven by the expansion of telemedicine for mail-order abortion pills, increased options and assistance for women who traveled, and a surge of publicity about ways to get abortions.
The response by abortion providers and activists to the end of Roe v. Wade, it seems, has resulted in more access to abortion in states where it’s still legal — not just for women traveling from states with bans but also for women living there.
Still, new bans and restrictions have had far-reaching effects. Many women, especially in the South, have turned to methods outside the U.S. medical system or carried their pregnancies to term, researchers said.
“I always think that should be the focal point to the story: The loss of access is profound and enormous,” said Alison Norris, a professor at Ohio State and a chair of WeCount, which gathered the data. “But it’s also a story of what happens when health systems increase access.”
John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, said he was not surprised to see so many women continuing to seek abortions. He said that to decrease the number, policymakers needed to increase enforcement of bans and provide more support for pregnant women.
In the 12 months after the Dobbs decision in June 2022, there were on average 82,298 abortions a month, compared with 82,115 in the two months before Dobbs, WeCount found. The group, part of the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion rights, collects numbers from providers across the U.S. The data, released Tuesday, included 83 percent of known providers, and researchers estimated the remainder based on historical trends and abortion data from states.
The New York Times