Study: Over 23K Fewer Abortions Since Supreme Court Decision On Dobbs
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The Supreme Court decision on Dobbs has had a major impact on abortions in the United States.
Since the ruling, there were 24,290 fewer abortions between July 2022 and March 2023.
A new study estimates there were 24,290 fewer legal abortions between July 2022 and March 2023, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
FiveThirtyEight obtained the study from #WeCount, which is a national research project led by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that supports research about abortion and contraception. That study found that there were more than 24,000 fewer abortions compared to a pre-Dobbs baseline. #WeCount made its estimate by contacting every abortion clinic in the country multiple times over a twelve-month period.
The study found that there were approximately 93,575 fewer abortions in states that limited abortion for at least one week in the nine-month period after Roe v. Wade was overturned. At the same time, the number of legal abortions in states where abortion remained legal rose by 69,285 in the same period. That shift signals “that many people did travel and successfully obtain an abortion within the U.S. health care system,” according to the report.
“Underneath these topline trends, meanwhile, is a huge amount of variability by state. Some parts of the country, like the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest, have seen relatively small changes,” FiveThirtyEight reported of the study. “But a handful of states bordering the large swath of the South where an abortion is almost impossible to obtain are absorbing large numbers of new patients. There were 12,460 additional abortions in Florida in the nine months after Dobbs, 12,580 additional abortions in Illinois and 7,975 additional abortions in North Carolina.”
In states where Abortion is severely restricted or banned there were 93,575 fewer abortions.
In states where abortion remains mostly available the number of abortions rose by 69,285.
But the overall decline in abortions is just one part of the story. #WeCount’s estimates, which were collected by contacting every abortion clinic in the country multiple times over a period of twelve months, shows the Dobbs ruling has created intense turmoil for tens of thousands of Americans across the country. There were an estimated 93,575 fewer legal abortions in states that banned or severely restricted abortion for at least one week in the nine-month period after Dobbs.2 The number of legal abortions in states where abortion remained mostly available did rise by 69,285 in the same period, signaling that many people did travel and successfully obtain an abortion within the U.S. health care system. “But a significant number of people are trapped and can’t get out of places like Texas,” said Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College who studies abortion policy and reviewed the #WeCount data at FiveThirtyEight’s request. “And for the people who are traveling, we’re talking about enormous distances. Some people are likely getting delayed into the second trimester.” With more bans on the horizon in big states like Florida — and abortion clinics and funds struggling to keep up in other states — abortion access seems likely to erode further in the second year after Dobbs.
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