Telehealth abortions are undermining recently enacted pro-life laws in the United States.
Last week the Society of Family Planning released updated abortion data through its #WeCount project. The latest update contains both state and national abortion data through the first six months of 2025. Unfortunately, the news is not good for pro-lifers.
According to the #WeCount data, over 591,000 abortions were performed in the first six months of 2025. This represents a 1.1 percent increase when compared to the first six months of 2024.
The #WeCount data provides some important information on how policy changes impact the incidence of abortion. Two state Medicaid programs have recently started to fund elective abortions. Nevada’s Medicaid program began covering elective abortions in mid-December of 2024, and Delaware’s Medicaid program started covering elective abortions as of January 1, 2025.
Unsurprisingly, there has been an uptick in abortions in both states. When the first six months of 2025 are compared with the last six months of 2024, both Nevada and Delaware saw their abortion numbers increase by between 8 and 10 percent. This is consistent with a broad body of political science, economics, and public health research that shows that taxpayer funding of abortion increases abortion rates.
However, the main takeaway from this new #WeCount data is that the percentage of abortions done via telehealth continues to increase. In the first six months of 2024, just under 20 percent of all abortions were done via telehealth. That figure increased to 27 percent for the first six months of 2025. Telehealth abortions are undermining the strong pro-life laws that many states enacted in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision.
Preventing telehealth abortions needs to be a top priority for the pro-life movement. State attorneys general in Florida and Texas have recently sued the Food and Drug Administration over policy changes regarding chemical abortions. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also has brought a civil lawsuit against a New York physician who had allegedly sent chemical abortion pills to a woman in Texas.
Of course, the Trump administration FDA has the ability to ban telehealth abortions. Telehealth abortions were first approved by the FDA during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sadly, both the Biden FDA and the Trump FDA have allowed telehealth abortions to continue. Unfortunately, recent media reports have indicated that FDA commissioner Marty Makary plans to delay the FDA’s safety review of mifepristone until after the 2026 elections. Pro-lifers should hope these state litigation strategies are successful.