The Society of Family Planning released its latest abortion estimates a couple of days ago, and they show that the number of abortions continues to increase. Here is the abortion rate in states where abortion is permitted:
However, not all of these abortions are performed in states where abortion is permitted. Check this out:
Shield laws protect doctors who provide telehealth consultations to women in states where abortion is banned. This chart suggests that it accounts for the bulk of the increase in abortions.
These numbers aren't exact, and things might change over time. But in the same way that banning a book just draws more attention to it, Dobbs seems to have drawn more attention to abortion. It's a little inexplicable, but banning abortions seems to have energized the pro-choice side so much that (slightly) more women are now aware of their options and are choosing to have abortions. This is certainly not what anyone expected.
I doubt there's a publicity effect here. Abortion has been a high-profile issue for decades; I doubt anyone was unaware of it.
I think it more likely that the actual abortion rate has been flat since Dobbs, but *recorded* abortions have increased. I suspect that pre-Dobbs, there were unrecorded abortions happening in red states courtesy of PCPs and OB-GYNs who were willing to prescribe misoprostol or perform a D&C on false pretenses to skirt the TRAP laws, figuring that the odds of getting caught were low and the punishment would be nothing too serious even if they were. But after Dobbs, abortion was criminalized outright in the states that had formerly had TRAP laws, and the "sly providers" got cold feet in the face of potential jail time and started referring their patients to blue-state providers.
The first graph is abortions in states with few abortion restrictions. Of course that has increased as a result of women traveling from states where abortion is practically restricted.
I think there's a good chance it's the medication abortions. They were not as available and definitely not as publicized before.
Now...you can get abortion pills at home for $150 with no need to talk to a doctor. (Theoretically a doctor signs off but they don't necessarily talk to the patient.) Naturally making a thing easier to get increases consumption of the thing.
don't want an abortion? teach kids sex ed starting at grade 5 and make birth control readily available and free.
Ah, but you see it's not really about abortion. It's about sex without intent to reproduce. If it were about abortion, conservatives would be handing out condoms and birth control on every street corner.
Do the math.
Especially to those they don't want to have a "Quiverfull" - IOW, people unlike them. I wonder if some of the White Christian Nationalists would be employing eugenics & even sterilization if they could.
Conservatives frequently like to point out that Margaret Sanger was fairly bought in on eugenics, which is true. Birth control is the surest way to lifting women out of poverty, couple it with education and it's a total game changer. Do note that the far right is a war against both birth control and education, they give women back the power that keeps them poor and in bad marriages made solely for economic stability (see also JD Vance).
In other words, good for awful men, bad for women in general.
There’s always going to be a percentage of pregnant women who’d been okay with the idea of pregnancy until they get a cold hard dose of reality, usually regarding their partners’ suitability. Counseling on healthy relationships would be nice, but impossible to implement.
No way of knowing for sure, but I wonder if the uptick in the overall rate might not be related to women who have a pregnancy that they're told *could* be higher risk and before Dobbs would have proceeded anyway and trusted their doctors, but now are thinking "no way am I taking even the smallest chance that this goes south and I be left to die or end up permanently injured."
Telehealth has made abortion an easier option, too. Before, you needed to make an appointment, go to a clinic, get poked at by a doctor and have to pay some unpredictable sum to get the prescription and follow up care. With telehealth, it can all be done on one's phone. Call and set up the consultation, do the consultation and then wait for the medication. Then do the follow up call.
I'm not saying it's easy or not a big decision, but telehealth eliminates some of the friction.
One of the changes is that pharmacists in red states are feeling their oats, and failing to fill prescriptions for birth control or Plan B -- and the "work around" of going elsewhere doesn't work well when you're rural and the next pharmacy is a long drive away. (It happened before, but the abortion criminalization laws were important social reinforcement for being a roadblock.)
Fortunately, mail-order pharmacies are more abundant than ever.
If you need Plan B, though, you don't have time to wait 3-5 days for it to arrive in the mail. Maybe some do next-day express or something.
Generally, an environment ruled by conservatives isn’t exactly ideal for raising children, much less gestating them. My childbearing years were thankfully over by the time Dobbs was dumped on us, but it’s an unhealthy culture.
The increase may be a bit surprising, but it’s not news that laws restricting abortion are totally ineffective at lowering abortion rates. We know what works: easily available, effective contraceptives (especially LARCs), sex education and education/empowerment for women and girls. This has been demonstrated in multiple countries. The fact that the GOP actively opposes all of these shows clearly that lowering the incidence of abortion isn’t their true goal.
Limiting abortion mainly happens in states with high infant death rates.
They are directly correlated, but only by the fact that in those states a fetus is a precious, holy human life to be valued even above that of the mother herself, whereas any child, once born, particularly if it's poor or of color, can go fuck itself.
The next step of course will be a national ban on abortion. It was always the forced birthers endgame. Dog forbid if the Republicans gain control of the presidency and congress, a full ban is not only possible, but virtually a sure thing. Despite Trumps protestations to the contrary, he'll gladly sign the bill outlawing abortion. He'll scribble his signature on whatever bill they put in front of him.
"banning a book just draws more attention to it"
Oh, so the Streisand Effect is universal and global, then.
It's interesting that the anti-vax right argues that "It's my body. It's my choice." with regards to vaccination but argues that "It's your body. It's my choice." with regards to abortion.
And, it must be admitted, vice versa. I'm anti-choice on vaccination and pro-choice on abortion. The difference as I see it is that my pregnant neighbor poses no threat to me whereas my unvaccinated neighbor is a definite threat to me.