Dive Brief:

• The number of legal abortions performed in the U.S. dropped by roughly 32,260 in the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to new data from the Society of Family Planning.
• From July to December last year, an average of 5,377 fewer pregnancies were legally terminated each month nationwide compared to before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which resulted in dozens of states banning or restricting access to abortions, the report found.
• Legal abortions provided in the 13 states with near-total bans plummeted to fewer than 10 per month in the six months following the Dobbs decision. Procedures increased slightly in states where abortions remain legal, with the largest jump in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Colorado and Michigan — all which border states with more restrictive abortion laws, suggesting citizens of those states seeking the procedure traveled nearby for care.

Dive Insight:

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June overturning the constitutional right to an abortion has resulted in patchwork access to the procedure across the country and, in some states, week-by-week changes in its legality as states litigate abortion restrictions in court.

The new report from the SPF, an abortion research nonprofit, aims to measure shifts in abortion provision by clinicians in each state following the controversial ruling. It only includes data on legal abortions performed in medical settings, and does not include self-managed abortions. It’s unclear how many women have accessed an abortion through other means since the Dobbs ruling, including procuring abortion pills from friends or out-of-state providers.

The SPF found that in July, the first full month after the Dobbs decision, there were severe declines in abortions in states with bans, meaningful declines in states with restrictions and small increases in states without restrictions. The national number of abortions dropped again in September and October, and reached its lowest point in November.

The drop is in stark contrast to the upward trend in abortion rates in the U.S. since 2017, which (among other research documenting reduced birth rates) suggests an increasing desire to avoid pregnancy, the Society for Family Planning said.

“The net overall declines in abortion incidence in the US after Dobbs are even more striking given that there were trends of increasing abortion rates just before Dobbs,” researchers wrote.

Since the Dobbs decision, states with bans witnessed a cumulative total of 43,410 fewer people who had abortions through December, the report found.

In states where abortion is allowed, there was a cumulative total of 11,150 more people who had abortions in that timeframe.

The report also found though abortions have dropped overall, more are taking place by way of virtual clinics. In December, about 8,540 abortions were performed via telehealth, more than double compared to in April, the SPF said.

On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas invalidated the government’s decades-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which could further threaten access to abortions across the U.S. The Department of Justice has filed an appeal of the decision, while another judge in Washington state filed an antithetical ruling ordering the FDA to maintain the pill’s availability.

Meanwhile, the decision has resulted in some states stockpiling misoprostol, the second drug used in the two-step medication abortion regimen after mifepristone that can be used alone to terminate a pregnancy.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said California has secured 250,000 misoprostol pills and negotiated the purchase of up to 2 million more, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state plans to accumulate a five-year supply of the drug to meet anticipated demand.