Abortion Rates Fluctuate After Recent Legal Decisions, New Data Reveals

Legal abortions in the US decreased by over 6% in the six months after the Supreme Court ended the right to abortion last June, according to a report by WeCount, a research effort of the Society of Family Planning. The decline exceeds what was estimated by some researchers before the Supreme Court ruling, with new restrictions and the obstacles they create preventing even more women than expected from obtaining legal abortions. The data goes through Dec. 31, by which point 13 states had banned abortion with almost no exceptions and another, Georgia, had banned it after six weeks of pregnancy. Legal abortions in the states with total bans fell to nearly zero, while they increased in states where abortion remained legal, suggesting that some women traveled across state lines.