United States: A six-week abortion ban enacted in Florida has drastically reduced the number of abortions offered in the state and is lowering the national numbers as well, according to a report.
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Abortions in the state of Florida reduced by over a third in a month after May when the state government banned procedures past six weeks of pregnancy, according to data from the research and policy organization that supports abortion- the Guttmacher Institute.
May and June abortions of 5,400 per month were recorded, although the number of abortions recorded per month was above 8,000 in the first quarter of the year, CNN Health reported.
Over the same time period, the national average monthly rate of abortion decreased by 7 percent or about 7,000 fewer abortions per month, and Florida’s contribution was over one-third of such decrease.
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There exists such rates by season, and there are changes in abortion rates from one month to another, they state.
However, according to Guttmacher data, the changes were much sharper in Florida; in the other states, without a complete ban on abortion, the number of abortions decreased by only 2 percent in May and 9 percent in June.
These tighter restrictions were projected to greatly impact Florida in addition to other regions across the country.
About 11 percent of all abortions in the country occurred in Florida before the tighter policy was implemented in May, and it had become an important provider of abortions for the South after the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision stripped the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, CNN Health reported.
Guttmacher estimates that there were nine thousand out-of-state individuals who sought abortions in Florida in 2023, these people coming from banned states such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.