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 monthly numbers from providers across the country. The new data, released Tuesday, included 83 percent of known providers, and researchers estimated the remainder based on historical trends and abortion data from states.
Another estimate of abortions by the Guttmacher Institute, using a smaller sample of providers and for a shorter period, also found that abortion was most likely increasing nationwide.
The report does not include abortions outside the U.S. medical system — such as ordering abortion pills from abroad or traveling across the border. On average, there were around 5,000 more requests a month for pills from the largest overseas provider, Aid Access, in the 11 months after Dobbs than in the period before that decision was leaked, according to new data from Abigail Aiken, who leads the Self-Managed Abortion Needs Assessment Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The biggest increases in legal abortions occurred in states that border those with bans, suggesting that many patients traveled across state lines. In New Mexico, the average number of monthly abortions in the year after Dobbs increased 61 percent from the two months before, to 1,910. In Illinois, the rise was 33 percent, to 7,302. In Florida, which bars abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy but is surrounded by states with stricter bans, abortions were up 28 percent, to 7,705.
Patients regularly travel hundreds of miles, and confusion about laws and continuing changes to them have made travel options progressively more difficult, said Alexia Rice-Henry, co-executive director of ARC-Southeast, which helps people in six states arrange and pay for travel to abortion clinics.
