If the goal of striking down Roe v. Wade was to decrease the number of abortions, the move has backfired spectacularly.
Why? Because the number of American women getting abortions has actually increased since the right to abortion was overturned by the US Supreme Court in June 2022, according to new research.
Specifically, according to the WeCount study published this month by the Society of Family Planning, the number of abortions nationwide has risen significantly from 86,830 at the time of the reversal to just shy of 100,000 in March 2024.
The increase, the organization says, is largely due to doctors in more abortion-friendly states providing abortion pills to patients in more restrictive states via telehealth care.
"Telehealth abortion is making a critical difference for people seeking abortion care in this increasingly restrictive environment," WeCount cochair and University of California, San Francisco reproductive science professor Ushma Upadhyay said in a statement about the report. "Telehealth also eases the surges and cuts down on wait times at abortion clinics providing in-person abortion care, which continues to be a critical route to abortion access, accounting for 80 percent of all abortions."
The report, which analyzed data from April 2022 to March 2024, found that abortions crested over 100,000 in January this year — the first time ever since WeCount started measuring abortion volume and data in 2022 when the US Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion in the Dobbs v Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization case.
Since then, more than a dozen states have made abortion illegal, while others have introduced new restrictions — or, alternately, expanded access to the reproductive health procedure.
One major consequence is that women living in more restrictive places are getting abortion pills via telehealth based in states that have both wider access to abortion and shield laws that protect the doctors from getting prosecuted for prescribing abortion drugs to out-of-state residents.
It just goes to show that no matter the law of the land, women everywhere will seek ways to control their reproductive health.
More on abortion: Infant Mortality Spikes After Abortion Ban
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