Numbers decline after legislation repeal

It is not clear how many abortions have been performed since the Roe vs Wade ruling last year due to reporting lags and gaps in the data.

Estimates from the Society of Family Planning suggest states that instituted abortion bans had more than 7,000 fewer abortions in the six months following the Supreme Court decision on June 24 last year, which overturned the federal right to abortion.

The authors of#WeCount, a survey conducted for the Society of Family Planning, also said the monthly average went down after the decision.

The group's data showed the number of abortions provided through clinics, hospitals and other providers in states where bans were put in place plummeted to nearly zero.

The#WeCount survey of abortion providers has found the overall average number of abortions at clinics and hospitals was lower in the months after the Dobbs ruling, from July last year through March, but that the number of abortions has risen dramatically in states that border those with no access, such as Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico and North Carolina. In Illinois, the survey tallied about 5,600 abortions in April last year and more than 7,900 in March.

Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention covering last year are not likely to be released until late next year. Even then, the picture will not be completely clear because not every state collects abortion data, and what is collected does not include self-managed abortions provided outside clinics, hospitals and doctor's offices.

The number of patients seeking abortions in the United States rose in 2020 and reversed some 30 years of decline, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The number of abortions recorded by Guttmacher's Abortion Provider Census rose to 930,160 in 2020, an 8 percent increase compared with 2017, the last time the data were collected.

The report lists several potential factors that may have contributed to the increase, including increased abortion access in some states through Medicaid expansion, or the growth of abortion funds that help low-income people cover the costs of obtaining an abortion.