Women living in U.S. states with abortion restrictions have shifted from traveling out of state to undergo the procedure to taking prescribed abortion pills via telehealth, according to a report released Tuesday by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
In 13 states with abortion bans, about 91,000 women received prescriptions for abortion pills via telehealth in 2025, according to the report. This number represents an increase of more than 25% compared to the 72,000 prescriptions in 2024, according to the institute’s estimates.
Conversely, the report found that the number of women traveling from states that ban abortion to states with less restrictive laws increased from 74,000 in 2024 to about 62,000 in 2025.
Nationally, the number of people who traveled for abortions fell to 142,000 last year, compared to 170,000 recorded in 2024 and 154,000 in 2023.
“Taken together, these estimates suggest a substantial change in how people in states under a total ban access abortion care, with fewer people traveling out of state and more accessing care via telehealth,” wrote the report’s authors, Isaac Maddow-Zimet and Kimya Forouzan.
The report notes that this trend has been facilitated by so-called “safeguard laws,” which protect providers from lawsuits by states where abortion is illegal. Eight U.S. states – California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington – have such laws.
Nationally, the number of recorded abortions in 2025 stood at more than 1.12 million, virtually unchanged since 2024 and the highest rate since 2009.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections in 2022, 13 states instituted near-total bans on the procedure, and six others significantly restricted access.
