Latest research indicates that the variety of abortions increased in the primary half of 2023 in most states where they were legal this 12 months.
Data collected by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access, gives the clearest picture to this point of where persons are looking for abortions within the U.S., greater than a 12 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The increases were especially pronounced in places that implemented policies to preserve abortion rights — equivalent to Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Washington — in addition to in states like Kansas and Latest Mexico, which border states with abortion bans.
In Latest Mexico, the variety of abortions from January to June greater than tripled in comparison with the identical period in 2020 — the last 12 months for which the Guttmacher Institute has comparable data. That is an indicator that folks are crossing state lines to terminate pregnancies, said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, an information scientist on the Guttmacher Institute who helped conduct the research.
“The rise in a state like Latest Mexico might be primarily driven by travel from bordering states like Texas. That is something that we have actually heard anecdotally prior to now, and I feel the size of this modification bears that out,” Maddow-Zimet said.
The numbers Maddow-Zimet’s team published are based on monthly estimates from a sample of abortion providers in each state and don’t include self-managed abortions — medication abortions performed outside of clinics, doctor’s offices or telehealth settings.
In accordance with the Guttmacher estimates, in Colorado — where abortion rights are guaranteed by state law — the number was up 89% in the primary half of this 12 months in comparison with the primary half of 2020.
And in Illinois — which has enacted policies that protect abortion providers and patients who travel to receive abortions there — abortions were up 69%. An estimated 44,000 were performed in the primary half of 2023, in comparison with greater than 26,000 in the primary half of 2020.
“It already was sort of a bastion of access within the region before, and I feel it’s turn out to be much more so,” Maddow-Zimet said.
After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the Alamo Women’s Clinic closed its abortion clinic in San Antonio and opened locations in Albuquerque, Latest Mexico, and Carbondale, Illinois. Andrea Gallegos, the clinics’ executive administrator, said each locations were busy instantly. She estimated that they each see 400 patients monthly.
Most out-of-state patients on the Latest Mexico location are from Texas, she said, while the Illinois location serves patients who travel from a greater variety of places.
“We strategically decided to open in southern Illinois due to the proximity to so many states that will likely have bans,” Gallegos said. “It’s common for us to have patients from nine different states in at some point due to that.”
Michele Landeau, the chief operating officer at Hope Clinic, an abortion provider in southern Illinois, said greater than 80% of the clinic’s patients come from states with abortion bans or restrictions. Around 15% or 20% need to travel 12 or more hours, she added.
“Our volume has increased exponentially,” Landeau said. “Unfortunately, we aren’t in a position to see one and all that calls us.”
In 2020, greater than 113,000 abortions were administered across the 13 states which have since enacted total abortion bans, in addition to Wisconsin, where many health care providers are hesitant to supply abortions due to an 1849 law criminalizing the practice. That was nearly 12% of the national total that 12 months, in response to the Guttmacher Institute.
In the primary few months of this 12 months, just 14 abortions were reported in Texas.
Since June — the most recent data included within the Guttmacher research — abortion bans or restrictions have also gone into effect in Indiana, North Carolina and South Carolina after having been held up in court. The results of those policies usually are not reflected within the report.
The Guttmacher researchers said they would want more data to find out how the variety of abortions has modified on a national scale, including estimates of self-managed abortions. Nonetheless, the variety of abortions within the U.S. rose in 2019 and 2020, and state-level data suggests that the pattern continued in 2021.