Legal abortions appear to have increased by more than 11% during the first six months of 2023 compared to the same timeframe in 2019 when abortion was legal as a matter of federal law, according to new data. The rise came even as the procedure is banned in more than a dozen states.
The data shows that as many as 511,000 legal abortions are estimated to have been performed during the first six months of 2023 in the 36 states and Washington, D.C., where the procedure is still legal, according to data released Thursday from the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.
Guttmacher estimates 916,460 abortions occurred in 2019. Taking half of that number to correspond to half a year, the number of abortions appears to have increased by more than 11% from 2019 to 2023.