The number of abortions in the U.S. kept rising in 2024 because of telehealth prescriptions, report finds

Abortion-rights activists holds a signs as they protest outside of the Supreme Court during a rally on March 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The number of abortions in the U.S. rose again in 2024, with women continuing to find ways to get them despite bans and restrictions in many states, according to a report out Monday.

The latest report from the WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion access, was released a day before the third anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion nationally for most of pregnancy.

Currently, 12 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy -- often before women realize they are pregnant.

While the total number of abortions has risen gradually over those three years, the number has dropped to near zero in some states, while abortions using pills obtained through telehealth appointments have become more common in nearly all states.

Pills are used in the majority of abortions and are also prescribed in person.

The overall number of abortions has risen, but it is below historic highs

The latest survey, released Monday, tallied about 1.1 million abortions nationally last year, or about 95,000 a month. That is up from about 88,000 monthly in 2023 and 80,000 a month between April and December of 2022. WeCount began after Roe was overturned, and the 2022 numbers don’t include January through March, when abortions are traditionally at their highest.

The number is still well below the historic peak in the U.S. of nearly 1.6 million a year in the late 1990s.

The Society of Family Planning relies primarily on surveys of abortion providers and uses estimates.

Pills prescribed by telehealth now account for one-fourth of U.S. abortions

WeCount found that in the months before the Dobbs ruling was handed down, about 1 in 20 abortions was accessed by telehealth.

But during the last three months of 2024, it was up to 1 in 4.

The biggest jump over that time came in the middle of 2023, when laws in some Democratic-controlled states took effect with provisions intended to protect medical professionals who use telehealth to prescribe pills to patients in states where abortion is banned or where there are laws restricting telehealth abortion.

WeCount found that about half of the telehealth abortions last year were facilitated by the shield laws. The number of telehealth abortions also grew for those in states without bans.

WeCount is the only nationwide public source of information about the pills prescribed to women in states with bans. One key caveat is that it is not clear how many of the prescriptions result in abortion. Some women may change their minds, access in-person abortion or be seeking pills to save for future use.

The WeCount data could help explain data from a separate survey from the Guttmacher Institute, which found the number of people crossing state lines for abortion declined last year.

Anti-abortion efforts are focused on pills

Anti-abortion efforts are zeroing in on pills, along with barring federal funds for Planned Parenthood and undoing ballot measures that provided for abortion access.

Three states have sued to try to get courts to limit telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone, one of the two drugs usually used in combination for medication abortions. President Donald Trump’s administration last month told a judge it does not believe the states have legal standing to make that case.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year found that anti-abortion doctors and their organizations didn’t have standing, either.

Meanwhile, officials in Louisiana are using criminal laws, and there is an effort in Texas to use civil penalties against a New York doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to women in their states. Louisiana lawmakers have also sent the governor a bill to further restrict access to the pills.

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said on a call with reporters Monday that it’s a priority for her group to keep pushing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials to investigate the safety of abortion pills -- and to require that they be dispensed only in person.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press