Three years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and conservative states rushed to pass strict new abortion bans or revive old ones still on the books but unenforceable under Roe. And for a short while, things went according to anti-abortion campaigners’ wishes, with the U.S. abortion rate—which had been declining since the 1990s anyway—continuing to fall.

But over the past couple of years, the U.S. abortion rate has begun to creep back up, according to data from the Society of Family Planning. There were more abortions in the U.S. in 2024 than in either 2023 or 2022, according to the group’s latest #WeCount report.

Strict abortion bans may be working to bolster conservative politicians (may being the operative word; a lot of pro-lifers are put off by the extremism baked into some of these policies). They do not, however, seem to be working at actually stopping abortions.

1.14 Million Abortions in 2024

The latest #WeCount data, released Monday, show that the monthly number of abortions in the U.S. went from 83,930 in April 2022 to 102,040 in January 2024.

In total, there were 1.14 million abortions performed in the U.S. last year, according to the #WeCount report. Throughout 2024, the monthly abortion number mostly remained between 90,000 and 100,000, with only one month (January) seeing more abortions than that and only one month (September) seeing fewer.

The monthly average number of abortions in 2024 was 95,200, up from a monthly average of 88,000 in 2023 and a monthly average of 79,600 for April 2022 (when the #WeCount report started) through December 2022.

Comparing the #WeCount data to abortion data from years before 2022 is a bit difficult, since other estimates—like those from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—were calculated differently. CDC data encompassing 46 states and the District of Columbia show 625,978 abortions performed in 2021 and 597,355 in 2020. The Guttmacher Institute also has measured abortion rates, finding 930,160 abortions in D.C. and all 50 states in 2020 and 916,460 abortions in 2019. The CDC’s much lower numbers rely on reports from centralized state health bodies, notes the Pew Research Center, while the Guttmacher Institute attempted to tally data from all known abortion providers.

Like the Guttmacher Institute, the #WeCount researchers have counted abortions based on information given by doctors, clinics, and other abortion providers. Self-reported data from clinics, medical offices, hospitals, and virtual providers accounts for 83 percent of the abortions in the study, while the remaining data have been imputed. (See the Methods section here for more on how this was done.)

The Role of Remote Prescribing

“The #WeCount findings make clear that abortion bans haven’t stopped people from seeking care,” said Alison Norris, #WeCount co-chair and a professor at Ohio State University.

One reason this is possible is the abortion pill and the remote prescribing of it.

In April through June of 2022, just 5 percent of abor

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