Report: US abortions continue post-Dobbs rise in part due to telehealth

WASHINGTON — The rate of abortions in the U.S. continued to increase in 2024 following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to a report by #WeCount, a research project by the Society of Family Planning, a group that supports legal abortion.

The report, released shortly before the third anniversary of the June 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said that in 2024, there were about 1.14 million abortions by licensed abortion providers across the U.S., an increase from the previous year’s findings of 1.06 million in 2023.

The report found that 25% of the tallied abortions in 2024 were facilitated by telehealth. That marks a significant jump from a similar report from 2022, when telehealth accounted for just 5%.

“The #WeCount findings make clear that abortion bans haven’t stopped people from seeking care,” Dr. Alison Norris, #WeCount co-chair and a professor at The Ohio State University’s College of Public Health, said in a statement. “As care shifts across state lines and into telehealth care, what’s emerging is a deeply fragmented system where access depends on where you live, how much money you have, and whether you can overcome barriers to care.”

The annual report, based on data submitted by abortion providers, provides insight about how they view trends in their industry. The survey only considered data about abortions by a “licensed clinician” within the health care system, researchers said, and does not account for “any attempt to end a pregnancy outside the formal health care system,” or such as what may be illegal or “self-managed” procedures, such as pills used for abortion that were ordered from overseas.

Catholic leaders in the U.S. welcomed the Dobbs decision for giving states “the freedom to protect preborn children,” as Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said in a June 16 statement.

The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, and as such, opposes direct abortion. Bishop Thomas also acknowledged in his statement “the battle for life is far from over” in the aftermath of Dobbs.

The #WeCount study found similar numbers to a May study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion, that estimated annual abortions in the U.S. to be at least 1.1 million.

That study cited data from #WeCount because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asks, but does not require, states to submit their abortion reporting data. This leads to an incomplete picture of the abortion landscape, Mia Steupert, CLI research associate and author of the study, said in a statement about their report.

“Abortion reporting provides key insight into how laws affect abortion numbers,” Steupert said. “However, no one except pro-abortion organizations like Society of Family Planning and Guttmacher Institute has access to raw abortion totals reported by abortion centers and organizations themselves. Access to that same information would be invaluable in our analysis of policies that end unborn human life.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which is affiliated with CLI, acknowledged an increase in abortions in the U.S. in a June 23 statement and said it should be “a wakeup call to the nation” and called for Congress to bar Planned Parenthood’s access to taxpayer funding.

“We are at the beginning of our fight to save unborn children and nowhere near the end,” Dannenfelser said. “Fueled by our taxpayer dollars, Big Abortion led by Planned Parenthood is undermining states’ ability to protect babies in the womb with mail-order abortions that almost always end the life of the unborn child and often send girls and women to the ER.”

The CDC recorded its highest levels for the U.S. abortion rate in the early 1990s at about 1.4 million.

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