USA – Abortions Are Rising—Even After Dobbs. A New Book Explains Why.

“It’s a story of resistance and resilience and hope.”

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
April 17, 2025

New data released this week reaffirmed a seemingly paradoxical reality of the post-Roe v. Wade era: Abortion rates have continued to rise despite the increasing restrictions nationwide.

The latest data, compiled by the abortion rights research and policy organization the Guttmacher Institute, shows that throughout 2024, clinicians provided more than one million abortions in states without total abortion bans, a slight increase compared to 2023. A closer look at the data reflects how healthcare providers and patients have adapted to changing circumstances—which have made access both more difficult and, in some ways, easier—since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoking the constitutional right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/abortions-are-rising-even-after-dobbs-a-new-book-explains-why/

Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights?

“Personhood,” by Mary Ziegler, is a field guide to the seemingly boundless tactical resourcefulness of the anti-abortion movement.

By Margaret Talbot
April 14, 2025

In the first two years after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, the number of abortions performed annually in the United States went up. On the face of it, this might seem perplexing. After all, many states seized the opportunity presented by the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to enact daunting new restrictions on abortion: twelve adopted near-total bans, and four more imposed gestational limits of six weeks, a point at which many people may not yet realize they are pregnant. Yet, suddenly, the U.S. was seeing an increase in abortions—from about nine hundred and thirty thousand in 2020 to more than a million in 2023. The best explanation for this apparent paradox was that providers and activists in states where abortion was still accessible devoted considerable energy and resources into making it more so. This was especially true for medication abortions provided via telehealth. In December, 2021, the F.D.A. had lifted its requirement that mifepristone be prescribed in person; the number of virtual clinics, which assess a patient’s eligibility online or by phone, and mail out the medications, proliferated.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/personhood-mary-ziegler-book-review

The Christian right has set the US on the road to Gilead. Without a fight, other nations may follow

Organisations that pumped money into overturning Roe v Wade are making inroads in Europe. Women’s rights are truly at risk

Deborah Frances-White
Sat 5 Apr 2025

With Donald Trump as president, there is now a heavy strain of Christian nationalism driving the US political agenda. From draconian abortion policies to ending birthright citizenship, some of Trump’s first executive orders sound startlingly like something out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian novel turned TV show set in Gilead, a fundamentalist, fascist version of the US where women have no rights. But it is urgent we understand that what is happening in the US could happen here. This road to Atwood’s Gilead is charting a course straight through the UK and Europe, and we may well be sleepwalking on to it.

In November 2024 I debated with the American conservative lawyer Erin Hawley at the Oxford Union. The motion was “This house regrets the overturning of Roe v Wade”, the US supreme court’s landmark decision that once protected the right to have an abortion at the federal level. Hawley is vice-president of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, founded by the US Christian right. She is also a high profile lawyer and supported the state of Mississippi on the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that overturned Roe.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/05/christian-right-us-gilead-roe-v-wade-europe-women-rights-abortion

Why overturning Roe v. Wade only made America’s abortion rate rise

"They will never stop abortion": "After Dobbs" chronicles "the extraordinary efforts" to help women get healthcare

By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
March 25, 2025

Republican politicians owe the pro-choice community a thank you card for saving the right from the worst impacts of their policies. After the Supreme Court overturned nearly five decades of abortion rights in the infamous Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, the fallout has been terrible: women nearly bleeding to death in hospital parking lots, women having to be airlifted to safer states for abortions, and, unfortunately, a few highly publicized deaths because abortion bans prevented timely care. Still, the impacts have fallen far short of what anti-choice activists hoped and what pro-choice activists feared. There haven't been hospitals filling up, as they did in the days before Roe v. Wade, with patients mutilated from botched abortions. It's not because women have, en masse, given up and submitted to forced childbirth. On the contrary, the birth rate continues to decline while the abortion rate went up after the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/03/25/why-overturning-roe-v-wade-only-made-americas-abortion-rate-rise/

Why US abortion restrictions matter beyond borders

To restore its position as a global advocate for human rights, the United States must ensure access to abortion within its borders.

March 10, 2025
By Jena Merritt

Abortion is healthcare—essential, life-saving, and fundamental to bodily autonomy. However, access to this critical service has become increasingly uncertain in the United States. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, state-level restrictions have created a patchwork of access, leaving many without options. While the immediate effects are felt domestically, the ramifications extend far beyond US borders, influencing global attitudes toward reproductive rights.

Continued: https://www.openglobalrights.org/why-US-abortion-restrictions-matter-beyond-borders/

The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
Feb 7, 2025

At his Senate confirmation hearings to head the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. surprised no one by admitting that he planned to order a new review of the safety of abortion pills. While Kennedy claimed that President Donald Trump has not taken a position—yet—on medication abortion, “he’s made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues,” Kennedy said. “And I’ll ask [agencies] to do that.”

This, of course, is exactly what anti-abortion groups have been pushing for. Since 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, abortion opponents have been ramping up unfounded claims that mifepristone and misoprostol are dangerous. Their efforts have included a flurry of letters to the new administration, explicit directives in the far right’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump term, and a barrage of ever-more-extreme lawsuits and state bills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/abortion-pill-forgotten-history-attacks-mifepristone-ru486-anti-abortion-extremists-new-book/

07.02.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Feminist Majority Foundation

Food and Drug Administration

manual vacuum aspiration

Reproductive Health Technologies Project

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies

Roussel-Uclaf

RU-486

Searle

Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Company

shield laws

telehealth abortion

telehealth clinics

telemedicine abortion

Planning for the Worst in Trump’s Next Term: Prepare, Don’t Panic, and Don’t Comply in Advance

Amy Hagstrom Miller championed abortion rights in Texas, and she’s ready for the next fight.

Mary Tuma
January 30, 2025

In the frenetic days following the November election, longtime abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller spent a lot of time in meetings—some in person, some on Zoom—rallying her troops. As one of the most prominent and tenacious independent abortion providers in the country, with six Whole Woman’s Health clinics in four states, it was a safe bet that she and her staff of 125 would find themselves in the crosshairs of a Donald Trump presidency and the anti-abortion extremists his second term will empower.

Hagstrom Miller could feel the alarm and dread that washed over some of her employees as they contemplated an America in which the 1873 Comstock Act might be enforced to institute a national abortion ban, the abortion pill would come under myriad other relentless attacks, federal appointees would use their bureaucratic powers to target providers in states where abortion remains legal, and patients would face new risks to their physical safety and constitutional rights.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/trump-amy-hagstrom-miller-championed-abortion-rights-in-texas-and-amy-hagstrom-miller-is-ready-for-the-next-fight/

Abortions are up in the US. It’s a complicated picture as women turn to pills, travel

Even with abortion bans in place in most Republican-controlled states, the number of people obtaining them has grown slightly

Geoff Mulvihill and Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press
Dec 28, 2024

Abortion has become slightly more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet.

It's now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/abortions-us-complicated-picture-women-turn-pills-travel-117162421

28.12.2024

News

Caitlin Myers

Dara Kass

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Guttmacher Institute

pregnancy complications

Roe v. Wade

traveling for abortion

USA -Why abortions rose after Roe was overturned

Contrary to many predictions, abortions did not decline nationally after the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. Here's what's behind the trend.

Nov. 26, 2024
By Aria Bendix

It seemed only logical after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that abortion rates would go down and births would go up. Instead, the opposite happened: Abortions went up last year and the country’s fertility rate hit a historic low.

More than 1 million abortions were recorded in the United States in 2023 — the highest in a decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion access. So far this year, abortion rates have remained about the same as in the last six months of 2023, preliminary data show.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/abortions-rose-roe-overturned-why-rcna181094

26.11.2024

Commentary

abortion by mail

Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access

abortion pills

Aid Access

Alliance Defending Freedom

American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs

Center for Reproductive Rights

Comstock Act

Diana Greene Foster

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Dr. Amy Whitaker

Dr. Christina Francis

Dr. Remy Coeytaux

Erik Baptist

Florida Access Network

Food and Drug Administration

Guttmacher Institute

Julie Kay

Karoline Leavitt

Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project

Matthew Kacsmaryk

medication abortion

mifepristone

National Right to Life

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro

telemedicine abortion

The Brigid Alliance

traveling for abortion

Trump’s win spells disaster for abortion rights

I’ve spent years tracking the far right attack on reproductive rights. Here’s what Trump’s win means for abortion.

Sian Norris
6 November 2024

Trump is heading back to the White House and the consequences for reproductive health in both the USA and globally are catastrophic.

When Trump first came to power in 2016, it provided Christian nationalists with what the author Anne Appelbaum described as their “biblical moment”. This was their unique opportunity to push forward their project and to fulfil their desired policies – to ban abortion, to roll back LGBTIQ rights, and to protect whiteness in America.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trump-abortion-rights-catastrophe/