The number of abortions in the United States increased again in 2024, with women who continue to find ways to access the procedure despite prohibitions and restrictions in many states, according to a report published on Monday.
The latest Wecount project report of the Family Planning Society, which supports access to abortion, was published a day before the third anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that annulled Roe V. Wade and ended almost 50 years of legal abortion nationwide.
Currently, 12 states are applying abortion prohibitions at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have prohibitions that enter into force in or around six weeks, often before women realize that they are pregnant.
(The arrest of a woman after a spontaneous abortion in Georgia generates fear and anger)
Although the total number of abortions has gradually increased during those three years, the number has fallen to almost zero in some states, while those through pills obtained through telemedicine quotes have become a more common method in almost all states.
The pills are used in most abortions and are also prescribed in person.
Below historical maximums
The last survey, published on Monday, counted around 1.1 million abortions nationwide last year, or around 95,000 per month.
That is an increase compared to approximately 88,000 per month in 2023 and 80,000 per month between April and December 2022. Wecount began after Roe was canceled, and the 2022 numbers do not include from January to March, when abortions are usually at their highest point.
The figure is still well below the historic peak of almost 1.6 million a year at the end of the 1990s.
The Family Planning Society is mainly based on abortion suppliers and uses estimates.
Telemedicine prescribed pills
Wecount found that in the months that the Dobbs failure was issued, approximately one in 20 abortions was carried out through telemedicine.
But in the last three months of 2024, he went up to one in four.
The greatest increase during that time occurred in mid -2023, when laws in some states controlled by Democrats entered into force with provisions aimed at protecting medical professionals who use telemedicine to prescribe pills to patients in states where abortion is prohibited or where there are laws that restrict it by telemedicine.
Wecount found that approximately half of the abortions on telemedicine last year were facilitated by protection laws. The figure also grew for those in states without prohibitions.
Wecount is the only national public source of information about pills prescribed to women in states with prohibitions. A key warning is that it is not clear how many of the recipes are in abortion. Some women may change their minds, access an abortion in person or could be looking for pills to save for the future.
The report data could help explain those of a separate survey from the Guttmacher Institute, which found that the number of people crossing state borders to abort decreased last year.
Anti -abortion efforts focus on pills
Three states have sued to try to limit the telemedicine recipes of Mifepristona, one of the two medications that are generally used in combination for abortions with medications. Last month, the president’s government, Donald Trump, told a judge that he does not believe that states have legal legitimacy to present that case.
(Meghan Markle breaks silence about the spontaneous abortion he had in 2020)
The Supreme Court determined last year that anti -abortion doctors and their organizations were not legitimized either.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Louisiana are using criminal laws, and there is an effort in Texas to use civil sanctions against a New York doctor accused of prescribing abortive pills to women in their states. Louisiana legislators have also sent to the governor a bill to further restrict access to pills.
