Abortions performed within the United States increased in 2023 by 10% since 2020 to the very best rate and total in greater than a decade, in response to updated estimates from the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, drawing skepticism from a pro-life researcher.
The recent Guttmacher Institute data comes from its Monthly Abortion Provision Survey, which isn’t similar to the Abortion Provision Census the organization conducts every three years.
The organization reports that there have been an estimated 1,026,690 abortions within the formal U.S. healthcare system in 2023, up 10% from 2020. Furthermore, the proportion of abortions that were chemical abortions rose from 53% in 2020 to 63% in 2023.
The study also found that just about every state that didn’t have what the Guttmacher Institute described as a “total abortion ban” saw their abortion numbers exceed their 2020 totals.
“The 10% increase on the national level in some ways understates the degree to which health systems, providers and support networks have needed to scale up care in certain states: States without total bans experienced a 25% increase in abortions in 2023 compared with 2020,” the Guttmacher Institute reported. “The sharpest increases were seen in states bordering ban states, where abortions increased by 37% from 2020 to 2023.”
Rachel Jones, Guttmacher’s principal researcher, said in an announcement that as states pass abortion restrictions, chemical abortions would be the most viable or only abortion option for some people even in the event that they prefer an in-person abortion.
“Thus, it is crucial to bear in mind that a rise in medication abortion doesn’t necessarily indicate that every one people using this method prefer it,” Jones said.
Michael New, senior associate scholar on the pro-life research organization Charlotte Lozier Institute and an assistant professor of social research on the Catholic University of America, responded to Guttmacher’s data in a National Review op-ed Tuesday.
New analyzed the most recent Guttmacher Institute figures, findings that look like consistent with a trend in increasing abortion rates. According to New, this trend began in 2017, five years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Constitution doesn’t confer a right to abortion and that states can legally restrict the practice.
“By Guttmacher’s own admission, the calculations for the Monthly Abortion Provision Survey come from ‘a slimmer portfolio of information’ and are designed to supply faster calculations on the incidence of abortion,” New wrote. “Given that, the 2023 abortion estimates might not be as reliable as Guttmacher’s previous annual abortion estimates.”
New speculated that some media outlets will use these abortion estimates to border pro-life laws as “ineffective.” But he maintains that the information, when taken at “face value,” would indicate that expanded access to chemical abortions increases the abortion rate.
Access to chemical abortion has expanded over time, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration extending the gestational limit in 2016 from 7 weeks to 10 weeks. The FDA further loosened abortion pill restrictions through the COVID-19 pandemic first by temporarily suspending an in-person doctor requirement, a choice the agency later made everlasting.
“Even though these latest data indicate that the incidence of abortion has increased because the [Supreme Court’s] Dobbs decision [in 2022], there continues to be very strong statistical evidence that newly enacted pro-life laws are stopping abortions and saving lives,” New asserted.
Data released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHS) last 12 months found three abortions were performed within the state in August 2022. In addition, the report found that not one of the abortions committed in August 2022 were elective, and all were reported to have been “medically crucial.”
In July 2022, following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade the previous month, 68 abortions were performed in Texas, in response to the information.
According to a report that the IZA Institute of Labor Economics published in November 2023, 13 states that enacted abortion bans after the Dobbs ruling saw roughly 32,000 additional annual births.
