Despite abortion being banned or extremely limited in a dozen states following the Dobbs decision, there were more abortions performed in the United States during the first six months of 2023 than the first six months of 2020, according to new research from the Guttmacher Institute.
“You have two forces at work,” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, who reviewed the Guttmacher report. “On the one hand, you have people trapped in ban states, and, on the other, you have people in a whole lot of the country where access has improved.”
The research shows that 511,000 abortions were performed in 2023 in states where the procedure was legal. This compares to 465,000 abortions nationwide in a six-month period of 2020.
Abortions rose in nearly every state where the procedure remains legal, but the change was most visible in states bordering those with total abortion bans. Many of these states loosened abortion laws, and providers opened new clinics to serve patients coming from elsewhere. In Illinois, for example, where abortion is legal, abortions rose an estimated 69 percent in 2023 compared with the same period in 2020, to about 45,000 from 26,000.
Other states with restrictive neighbors, like Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and South Carolina, also had jumps in estimated counts of abortions.
Those states that had restrictions or bans saw a drop in the estimated number of abortions. And researchers emphasize that just because abortion numbers have increased, doesn’t mean that the bans haven’t impacted access.
“Travel doesn’t come without a cost,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at the Guttmacher Institute and the lead researcher on the institute’s report. “Just because someone isn’t denied an abortion doesn’t mean it was an easy experience. And we know that some can’t leave their state.”
The report excludes abortions obtained outside of the formal health care system, through, for example, pills mailed into states with bans from other countries or states where abortion is legal. Other data suggests that thousands of people, especially those living in states with bans, have ordered abortion pills online from overseas.
Populous states like California, Florida, Illinois and New York had the most abortions. Because the researchers relied on a statistical model, they reported a range of uncertainty in their counts, and there was more uncertainty in states with more abortion providers. Data was not collected from the 14 states with abortion bans in effect in the first part of the year.
Anti-abortion groups are getting frustrated by the abortion travel that hasn’t impacted the abortion numbers at all.
“There is the feeling among legislators that we’ve passed strong laws here and yet our neighbors in Colorado or Illinois are allowing these businesses to pop up on our border,” said Katie Daniel, the state policy director at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Republicans in Congress are looking for a nationwide restriction of 15 weeks for almost all abortions. But the advocates for a total ban on abortion won’t budge on their position.
Until Republicans can reach some kind of consensus on the issue, abortion is likely to be a drag on the GOP’s electoral prospects.
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