The number of abortions in the United States increased slightly in 2025, marking the third annual increase since the Supreme Court overturned federal constitutional protections for abortion.
Approximately 1,126,000 clinician-provided abortions were performed in the U.S. last year, according to new data published on Tuesday by the pro-abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute.
That’s only up slightly from the 1,124,000 performed in 2024, but it is a continuation of the trend of rising abortion rates since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Abortion rates had been on the decline for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, following the nation’s peak of 1.6 million abortions in 1990. Rates began to trend upward again after reaching a low-water mark in 2009.
Analysts say that the proliferation of online sales of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol is the main reason abortion rates have continued to increase despite 20 states instituting tighter prohibitions or gestational age limits on abortion.
Nationwide, mifepristone accounts for nearly two-thirds, or 63%, of both in-person and telehealth abortions.
In 2025, only 62,000 women from the 13 states with total abortion bans traveled across state lines for the procedure, compared to 74,000 in 2024. By contrast, roughly 91,000 women from states with total abortion bans received abortion pills through the mail via telehealth in 2025, up from 72,000 the year prior.
Anti-abortion advocates have pressed the Trump administration to change the Food and Drug Administration’s safety requirements for the dispensing of mifepristone to require women to see a physician in person before obtaining the medication.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, FDA rules required women to have at least two doctor’s visits for a medication abortion to ensure the gestational age is below 10 weeks of pregnancy and to monitor for adverse health outcomes. The Biden administration FDA removed these requirements, opening a telehealth abortion market.
Tensions between the Trump administration and the anti-abortion wing of the GOP increased last fall when the FDA approved a new generic version of mifepristone, which activists say will further increase abortion rates.
Anti-abortion advocates have expressed great consternation at the growing rates of abortion post-Dobbs, taking it as a sign that the movement is struggling.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannefelser lambasted Vice President JD Vance for the encouraging tone in his speech at the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., in January, in which he touted the Trump administration’s accomplishments.
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Vance argued that there has been progress in the cause against abortion over the past decade, but Dannefelser retorted that “the clearest measure of whether the pro-life movement is winning or losing is the number of abortions occurring each year.”
“It is because of the inaction of the Trump-Vance administration on abortion drugs that this opportunity isn’t being realized — and abortions are going up, not down,” Dannefelser said.
