Abortion procedures rose in the U.S. last year, even with state abortion bans passed following the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade, according to a study published Tuesday.
An estimated 1,026,690 abortions were reported in the formal health care system in 2023, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute. It’s the highest number measured in the United States in more than a decade.
This is equal to about 15.7 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age and a 10 percent increase since 2020, researchers found.
2023 was the first full calendar year since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, eliminating the 1973 precedent granting the constitutional right to abortion.
The nation’s high court granted states authority to limit or ban abortion procedures, and in the months that followed, several Republican-led states moved to pass legislation restricting or prohibiting residents’ access to the procedure.
Fourteen states across the nation now have near-total abortion bans, and several states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah — established laws to restrict abortion access based on how far a patient is into their pregnancy term, the Guttmacher Institute noted.
