A report released Wednesday shows that abortions were on the rise from 2017 to 2020.
The report from the Guttmacher Institute, which used to be affiliated with abortion behemoth Planned Parenthood, stated that more than 930,000 abortions occured in the United States in 2020. About 862,000 occurred in 2017.
The Associated Press noted that the number of abortions had declined over a 30-year period. The figures released this week show a reversal.
Medication abortions, the two-drug combination sometimes called the “abortion pill,” accounted for 54% of U.S. abortions in 2020, the first time they made up more than half of abortions, Guttmacher said.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed down the numbers in some states, according to the report. In New York, abortions increased from 2017 to 2019, then fell 6% between 2019 and 2020. One in 10 clinics in New York paused or stopped abortion care in 2020.
Texas saw a 2% decrease between 2019 and 2020, coinciding with pandemic-related abortion restrictions in the state.
Elsewhere, the pandemic may have limited access to contraception, some experts said, or discouraged women from undertaking all the health care visits involved in a pregnancy.
Yet, abortions already were inching upward before the coronavirus upended people’s lives. One contributing factor: Some states expanded Medicaid access to abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute wrote in its write-up of the findings that the increase in abortions is a “positive development if it means people are getting the health care they want and need.”
“Rather than focusing on reducing abortion, politiies should instead center the needs of people and protect their right to bodily autonomy,” it added.
Townhall reported in January how an estimated 62 million abortions have occurred in the United States, according to National Right to Life Committee, since Roe took place.
The Supreme Court is expected to release a ruling in the abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization this summer. The case is over a 15-week abortion law in Mississippi. A draft opinion leaked from the Court and published by Politico last month showed the justices overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Leading Democrats used to say abortion should be ‘safe, legal and rare.’ Now the Biden administration and Democrats in Washington push abortion on demand until birth, paid for by taxpayers – including dangerous mail-order abortion drugs – and governors in states like California and New York seek to make their states ‘sanctuaries’ and ‘safe havens’ for the abortion industry,” Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “These extremists are far out of step with the majority of Americans who want greater limits on abortion than court precedents currently allow...Millions of lives are at stake.”