There have been at least 10,000 fewer abortions since the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade were repealed by the US supreme court in June.
New research from the national research project #WeCount shows that with federal abortion protections rolled back, there have been 10,570 fewer legal abortions – a 6% decline – than estimates in April before the June ruling.
#WeCount is a national abortion reporting project with the Society of Family Planning, an abortion and contraception science group. The research project has been tracking changes in abortion access since the overturning of Roe v Wade, collecting data from medical offices, hospitals, telemedicine providers and clinics.
The data does not include self-managed abortions, which could lower the overall decrease in terminations, according to the New York Times.
The recent statistics are a net calculation, meaning the total loss accounts for a decreased number of abortions in some states as well as an increase in abortions in other areas, for people who traveled out of state to terminate their pregnancies.
In the states that saw declines in their abortion numbers, including 13 states that have banned most abortions, terminated pregnancies decreased by about 22,000.
Meanwhile, other states that have protected abortion saw about 12,000 more abortions performed.
The published data shows that there has not been a total absorption of patients from other states who can no longer access abortion services, meaning there were thousands of people who “felt they had no options”, Ushma Upadhyay – #WeCount co-chairperson and a public health social scientist as well as professor at the University of California, San Francisco – said to FiveThirtyEight.
The data suggest that people in restrictive states traveled far to access an abortion, a burden that is exacerbated for people with fewer financial resources.
“Some of these states where abortion was banned – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, for example – are some of the poorest states in our country, and people would have to cross multiple state lines to get to another state where abortion remains legal,” said Kari White, a University of Texas at Austin researcher who is on the #WeCount research steering committee, to the New York Times.
States have also been exploring possible ways to target criminalizing interstate travel for an abortion, creating an additional barrier for those who are living in restrictive states.
“Even for the people who make it to another state, this is a hardship,” White added.
