No Anticipatory Obedience

More than a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one thing seems clear: New state bans have done little so far to deter women from obtaining abortions. 

Data released Tuesday shows the number of abortions ticked up slightly in the year following the high court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. That ruling, from June 2022, ended federal protections for the procedure, and paved the way for some 16 states to ban many or most abortions. 

The data indicate that abortion providers, funders and others have adapted quickly to a legal landscape that has changed profoundly. Access has been cut off throughout much of the South, and demand has surged in states in which abortion is still legal. Many providers there have had to significantly increase capacity. 

Nearly 115,000 fewer abortions were performed in the year after the Dobbs decision in states that banned abortions throughout pregnancy or after six weeks, according to the WeCount data. At the same time, states including Illinois, Florida and North Carolina—where the procedure remained largely legal—saw an increase of 117,000 abortions. 

The number of abortions in the U.S. accessed through telemedicine is growing. So are the challenges to this mechanism that has allowed patients in states with near-total abortion bans to acquire the abortion pill. 

One in four abortions in the U.S. were provided using telehealth at the end of 2024, compared with just 7% at the end of 2022, the report said. Half of those medication abortions were prescribed through telemedicine to patients living under bans by doctors operating in states with so-called shield laws. Eight states, including New York and Massachusetts, have shield laws designed to protect abortion providers from legal jeopardy, including extradition.

“Our mantra is no anticipatory obedience,” said Angel Foster, a co-founder of Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which sends abortion pills to ban states. “We aren’t going to change anything unless we have to in order to be legally compliant.”

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.”