Some 63% of abortions were conducted via abortion pills in 2023, marking a rise from 53% only three years prior, according to research published on Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute.
Some 642,700 preborn babies were murdered using abortion pills last year, according to estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, which did not consider “abortions obtained outside of the formal healthcare sector” or those involving abortion pills mailed to states claiming to have total bans on the lethal procedure. The data show a trend of increased reliance on abortion pills over the past two decades, including after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“While there are no comprehensive data on the number of self-managed medication abortions in the United States, evidence suggests they have been increasing in the past several years,” the Guttmacher Institute said. “Therefore, the total count of medication abortions nationally is higher than our count of those offered within the formal health care system.”
The most common “medication abortion” regimen offered in the United States is a combination of mifepristone, which blocks a pregnancy hormone called progesterone, as well as misoprostol, which causes the murdered child to be ejected from the uterus.
The study from the Guttmacher Institute added that the number of abortion providers offering a “telemedicine consultation” and sending pills via mail rose from 7% of known “medication abortion” providers in 2020 to 31% of the providers in 2022. The advent of “online-only clinics” marked 8% of abortions in the “formal healthcare system” in the first six months of 2023.
Hospitals and abortion clinics report the number of children they murder via abortion to state and federal health agencies, but data from self-managed abortions is not reported. Women in states with tighter regulations have also increasingly crossed state lines to obtain abortions.
Roughly fourteen states were widely reported to have fully banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, yet most states with pro-life majorities in their legislatures have laws explicitly exempting women from prosecution in the case of an abortion, according to a recent analysis from the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Several dozen pro-life groups endorsed a letter two years ago asserting that “women are victims of abortion” and clarifying that they stand against “any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women.”
Others assert that conventional pro-life laws fail to establish equal protection for preborn babies and worsen the abortion pill phenomenon. Foundation to Abolish Abortion President Bradley Pierce, a constitutional attorney who has drafted a number of bills seeking to abolish abortion, previously contended that “current laws in pro-life states not only fail to curb the growing number of self-managed pill abortions, but by giving complete immunity to women who abort, they actually create the conditions for this method of abortion to expand freely.”
