Cut out shot of unrecognizable woman holding up two blisters of pills and asking her doctor, via video call, which ones to take as her therapy.
Telehealth consultations for abortions have continued to rise since it began looking like Roe v. Wade would fall roughly two years ago, especially in states with shield laws for providers who remotely prescribe abortion medication to patients living in restrictive states.
Last year, telehealth made up 18% of all clinician-provided abortions in October and 19% in November and December, according to the Society of Family Planning’s latest #WeCount report. That’s up 3 percentage points from the reproductive health organization’s previous report.
Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., enacted shield laws protecting providers and patients from out-of-state prosecution or extradition. But several carved out explicit protections for doctors or other health care workers to prescribe abortion pills to patients living in states with abortion bans, The New York Times reported.
Nearly 8,000 people per month living in states with abortion bans or “severe restrictions” accessed medication abortion from providers in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and Vermont from October to December 2023, according to the #WeCount report. (California’s version of the law took effect in January, after the period of study.)
And over 40,000 people in states with near-total or six-week bans — and in states with telehealth restrictions — accessed abortion pills provided under shield laws elsewhere from July to December last year, according to #WeCount.
Despite the growth of telehealth abortion consultation, the majority of abortions — more than 80% — are still provided in-person, said Dr. Alison Norris, #WeCount co-chair and professor at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health.
“These 14 states that shut down clinics and eliminated access to in-person care in their states have really devastated access for thousands and thousands,” Norris told me.
Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama saw the greatest cumulative decline in abortions 18 months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, according to the report. On the flip side, the research shows Illinois, Florida and California saw the largest cumulative increases in abortions during the same time period.
But Florida, long viewed as an access point in the Southeast, enacted a six-week ban on May 1. “It’s a terrible shock to the ecosystem of health care in the whole region,” Norris said.
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