Post-Dobbs abortions on the rise in Texas
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Texas has seen the country's highest number of medication abortions via telehealth under shield law protections, with an average 3,427 monthly in the final quarter of 2024, per a new national report.
The big picture: The number of abortions in the U.S. continued to rise in 2024 — totaling 1.14 million — despite bans and restrictions in more than half the states, including Texas.
- Expanded telehealth access to medication abortion has allowed patients to circumvent state laws banning the procedure.
Stunning stat: Texas, which has a near-total ban on abortions, saw more monthly abortions by the end of 2024 than in the months before Dobbs was decided, according to the #WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that advocates for abortion access.
State of play: Shield laws are meant to provide legal protections to clinicians who offer telehealth abortion care to patients in states with restrictions.
- Yes, but: In February, a Texas judge ordered a doctor to stop prescribing and sending abortion pills under New York's shield law to patients in Texas and to pay a penalty of more than $100,000.
What's next: "This is exactly the kind of case where it really involves a conflict between states and so it's inevitable that it will make it to the Supreme Court," Carmel Shachar, director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, told Harvard Law Today in February.