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Great Britain marks 59 years and more than 11 million lives lost since royal assent for abortion
Cassy Cooke
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Abortion Pill·By Carole Novielli
STUDY: As telehealth abortions increased, abortion travel decreased
A cross-sectional study approved by the institutional review board (IRB) of Planned Parenthood's former "special affiliate," the Guttmacher Institute, claims that the "enactment of shield laws" after the overturning of Roe v. Wade "accounted for most abortions provided by US-based clinicians to residents of ban states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas."
A study from the Guttmacher Institute claims that shield laws allowing practitioners in pro-abortion states to mail abortion pills into pro-life states may be the reason why a decrease in abortion-related travel was seen between 2023 and 2025.
From 2023-2024, abortion travel decreased nearly 14% while telehealth abortions increased nearly 200%.
From 2024-2025, abortion travel decreased just over 16% while telehealth abortions increased just over 27%.
The study, "Telehealth Provision and Travel for Abortion Care in States With Total Bans," was published in JAMA Network Open and was funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Two authors (Rachel K. Jones and Abigail R. A. Aiken) are associated with the Guttmacher Institute.
The study authors began accurately, stating, "The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, and by 2023, 13 states had banned abortion."
However, past this point, the authors use misleading language, suggesting that Dobbs resulted in "forcing many people to travel out of state for care."
No one was "forced" to do anything
Abortion, the intentional killing of a living preborn child in the womb, is in no way "care."
On the contrary, abortion forces death on a living human baby and sometimes the mother is forced or coerced into it.
The authors' goal: To "understand whether travel for abortion care declined as telehealth abortion increased between 2023 and 2025 in the 13 states with total bans during this period" as a result of the "shield laws implemented in 8 states" which "offer legal protections for clinicians to prescribe abortion pills to patients in all states, including states with abortion bans."
The authors' findings: Shield laws "provided residents of ban states the option of accessing medication abortion... by mail," and "accounted for most abortions... to residents of ban states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas."
The data included 90% of Planned Parenthood, non-Planned Parenthood facilities, which "play[ed] key roles in abortion provision in their state and online-only clinics with caseloads of more than 50 abortions per month" and "facilities drawn randomly from all remaining abortion facilities."
In addition, "Counts include abortions provided by brick-and-mortar facilities and those provided by online-only clinics. Counts do not include any provision from community networks or websites that sell drugs without prescriptions."
The study suggested that the passage of shield laws, beginning in July of 2023, essentially flipped the script on abortion travel.
This enables women to remain in their home state, order abortion drugs online, and end the lives of preborn children, disposing of them by flushing them down the toilet (if small enough), or by hiding them in the trash, or by some other method. It should be noted that due to a "no-test" protocol, women are obtaining the drugs well past the FDA's 10-week gestational limit for abortion pill use.
Live Action News crunched the numbers:
Between 2023 (89,620) and 2024 (77, 090) abortion travel decreased nearly 14% while telehealth abortions (24,460 in 2023 v .71,180 in 2024) increased nearly 200%.
Between 2024 (77,090) and 2025 (64,590) abortion travel decreased just over 16% while telehealth abortions (71,180 in 2024 v. 90,460 in 2025) increased just over 27%.
Still, authors noted that, despite the shield law protections enabling telehealth abortion, 60,000 women still traveled out of state for abortions in 2025.
Guttmacher further summarized the findings:
In 2023, the number of residents of total-ban states who traveled out of state to access abortion care (89,620) was more than three times higher than the number who accessed care via telehealth (24,460).
By 2025, the majority of residents in total-ban states obtained their abortion via telehealth: 90,460, compared to 64,590 who traveled out-of-state for care.
The authors wrote:
Between 2024 and 2025, the increase in the number of abortions provided under the protection of shield laws was greater than the decline in residents who traveled out of state. It is possible that the availability of abortion under the protection of shield laws allowed people who would have been unable to travel to obtain wanted abortions.
Still, in 2025, more than 60 ,000 residents of ban states traveled for care, indicating continued demand for abortion funding and practical support.
Note that the authors emphasized a "continued demand for abortion funding and practical support" while assistance and resources for pregnant moms to keep and raise their babies was not mentioned.
"The implementation of shield laws may have facilitated access to care that many residents were already obtaining via licensed physicians who mailed medications from outside the US," they hypothesized (emphasis added).
The authors noted that their study was limited because abortion drugs sent through the mail under shield laws "do not necessarily represent abortions," as some women "may have obtained abortion medications from multiple clinicians and others may not have used the medications they received."
Also, patients may have been "reluctant to report" travel from an 'abortion ban' state, and therefore, counts "could be underestimated."
Ironically, as was the case in other JAMA studies, authors claimed their "data" was "too sensitive to share" so the data cannot be reviewed.
Despite the fact that the federal Comstock Act already restricts the shipment or mailing of “abortifacient matter through express companies, common carriers, or interactive computer services,” abortion pills are being shipped across the country and flooding into states that restrict abortion — while so-called "shield laws" in pro-abortion states protect those who ignore pro-life laws.
1973: Legalized abortion is thrust upon every state in the country under the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health reversed Roe but failed to offer national protection to the preborn child in the womb. Instead, the Court ruled that "the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," enabling a patchwork of abortion protections and expansions state by state.
2023: FDA's abortion pill safety protocols (REMS) were eroded to remove in-person dispensing and allow for mail order and pharmacy dispensing of the abortion pill. By the Spring of 2023, states led by radical pro-abortion lawmakers began to propose so-called shield laws to prevent abortionists in those states from being prosecuted for sending abortion drugs into states where it is illegal. These laws do not protect women.
2025: Guttmacher Institute estimated a total of 1,129,900 abortions committed in 2025. That same year estimated abortion pill totals reached a staggering 734,435 annually (61,203 abortions by pill per month, 2,012 a day, 84 hourly, and one abortion pill abortion every 43 seconds). Guttmacher claimed: "Data from the Society of Family Planning shows that as of December 2025, more than one in four clinician-provided abortions in the United States were provided via telehealth."
2026: States began pushing back, filing lawsuits targeting shield laws.
The FDA's 2023 changes to abortion pill safety protocols (REMS) are likely the main culprit behind national abortion increases and the flood of pills entering even pro-life states. Adding to this are the failure to enforce federal prohibitions, and drug manufacturers who aid and abet illegal efforts while failing to police or decertify prescribers who are not following the rules.
Live Action News previously found that:
Beginning in 2017, the United States saw the end of a long-term decline in the number of abortions, with numbers beginning to tick upwards year after year. By 2020, abortions totaled 930,160 — an increase of nearly 8% from 2017.
By 2023, the year that mail order abortion pills were permanently enabled by the FDA, abortions had increased nearly 14% (13.85%) from 2020 and then increased again in 2025 by over 21% (21.47%).
Today the abortion pill makes up at least 65% (or more) of all abortions (an estimated 734K+ in 2025 alone) currently committed in the United States.
While shield laws profit Big Abortion, they are often harmful to pro-life states, to women, and deadly to the preborn lives they target.
A lawsuit filed by three states against shield law providers alleges defendants engaged in an "illegal enterprise" by "deliberately bypassing safeguards," "misrepresented the safety, efficacy, legality, and FDA status of the drugs they sell," left out "material information about serious complications, the limitations of remote screening, and what can happen when a woman needs emergency care."
The lawsuit displayed the victims:
The Plaintiff states claim that the listed individuals and organizations "made false or misleading representations concerning the safety, effectiveness, legality, risks, and appropriate use of abortion-inducing drugs, including minimizing potential complications and the need for in-person medical care.
The lawsuit states in part:
Plaintiff States are incurring classic quasi-sovereign harms within their borders. Their laws are intended to protect the lives of unborn babies in Plaintiff States from the moment of conception—and yet Defendants’ conduct terminates those lives in violation of Plaintiff States’ laws.
The States also claimed that due to illegal abortion pills flooding their borders, providers are treating abortion pill complications "on a daily basis," with complications like "hemorrhaging requiring blood transfusions," "incomplete abortions" requiring further treatment, blood transfusions, and more.
Abortion providers are shielded from accountability, which is likely the true agenda behind shield laws.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·
Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·
Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·
Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·
Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·
Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·
Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill·By Carole Novielli
STUDY: As telehealth abortions increased, abortion travel decreased
A cross-sectional study approved by the institutional review board (IRB) of Planned Parenthood's former "special affiliate," the Guttmacher Institute, claims that the "enactment of shield laws" after the overturning of Roe v. Wade "accounted for most abortions provided by US-based clinicians to residents of ban states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas."
A study from the Guttmacher Institute claims that shield laws allowing practitioners in pro-abortion states to mail abortion pills into pro-life states may be the reason why a decrease in abortion-related travel was seen between 2023 and 2025.
From 2023-2024, abortion travel decreased nearly 14% while telehealth abortions increased nearly 200%.
From 2024-2025, abortion travel decreased just over 16% while telehealth abortions increased just over 27%.
The study, "Telehealth Provision and Travel for Abortion Care in States With Total Bans," was published in JAMA Network Open and was funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Two authors (Rachel K. Jones and Abigail R. A. Aiken) are associated with the Guttmacher Institute.
The study authors began accurately, stating, "The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, and by 2023, 13 states had banned abortion."
However, past this point, the authors use misleading language, suggesting that Dobbs resulted in "forcing many people to travel out of state for care."
No one was "forced" to do anything
Abortion, the intentional killing of a living preborn child in the womb, is in no way "care."
On the contrary, abortion forces death on a living human baby and sometimes the mother is forced or coerced into it.
The authors' goal: To "understand whether travel for abortion care declined as telehealth abortion increased between 2023 and 2025 in the 13 states with total bans during this period" as a result of the "shield laws implemented in 8 states" which "offer legal protections for clinicians to prescribe abortion pills to patients in all states, including states with abortion bans."
The authors' findings: Shield laws "provided residents of ban states the option of accessing medication abortion... by mail," and "accounted for most abortions... to residents of ban states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas."
The data included 90% of Planned Parenthood, non-Planned Parenthood facilities, which "play[ed] key roles in abortion provision in their state and online-only clinics with caseloads of more than 50 abortions per month" and "facilities drawn randomly from all remaining abortion facilities."
In addition, "Counts include abortions provided by brick-and-mortar facilities and those provided by online-only clinics. Counts do not include any provision from community networks or websites that sell drugs without prescriptions."
The study suggested that the passage of shield laws, beginning in July of 2023, essentially flipped the script on abortion travel.
This enables women to remain in their home state, order abortion drugs online, and end the lives of preborn children, disposing of them by flushing them down the toilet (if small enough), or by hiding them in the trash, or by some other method. It should be noted that due to a "no-test" protocol, women are obtaining the drugs well past the FDA's 10-week gestational limit for abortion pill use.
Live Action News crunched the numbers:
Between 2023 (89,620) and 2024 (77, 090) abortion travel decreased nearly 14% while telehealth abortions (24,460 in 2023 v .71,180 in 2024) increased nearly 200%.
Between 2024 (77,090) and 2025 (64,590) abortion travel decreased just over 16% while telehealth abortions (71,180 in 2024 v. 90,460 in 2025) increased just over 27%.
Still, authors noted that, despite the shield law protections enabling telehealth abortion, 60,000 women still traveled out of state for abortions in 2025.
Guttmacher further summarized the findings:
In 2023, the number of residents of total-ban states who traveled out of state to access abortion care (89,620) was more than three times higher than the number who accessed care via telehealth (24,460).
By 2025, the majority of residents in total-ban states obtained their abortion via telehealth: 90,460, compared to 64,590 who traveled out-of-state for care.
The authors wrote:
Between 2024 and 2025, the increase in the number of abortions provided under the protection of shield laws was greater than the decline in residents who traveled out of state. It is possible that the availability of abortion under the protection of shield laws allowed people who would have been unable to travel to obtain wanted abortions.
Still, in 2025, more than 60 ,000 residents of ban states traveled for care, indicating continued demand for abortion funding and practical support.
Note that the authors emphasized a "continued demand for abortion funding and practical support" while assistance and resources for pregnant moms to keep and raise their babies was not mentioned.
"The implementation of shield laws may have facilitated access to care that many residents were already obtaining via licensed physicians who mailed medications from outside the US," they hypothesized (emphasis added).
The authors noted that their study was limited because abortion drugs sent through the mail under shield laws "do not necessarily represent abortions," as some women "may have obtained abortion medications from multiple clinicians and others may not have used the medications they received."
Also, patients may have been "reluctant to report" travel from an 'abortion ban' state, and therefore, counts "could be underestimated."
Ironically, as was the case in other JAMA studies, authors claimed their "data" was "too sensitive to share" so the data cannot be reviewed.
Despite the fact that the federal Comstock Act already restricts the shipment or mailing of “abortifacient matter through express companies, common carriers, or interactive computer services,” abortion pills are being shipped across the country and flooding into states that restrict abortion — while so-called "shield laws" in pro-abortion states protect those who ignore pro-life laws.
1973: Legalized abortion is thrust upon every state in the country under the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health reversed Roe but failed to offer national protection to the preborn child in the womb. Instead, the Court ruled that "the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," enabling a patchwork of abortion protections and expansions state by state.
2023: FDA's abortion pill safety protocols (REMS) were eroded to remove in-person dispensing and allow for mail order and pharmacy dispensing of the abortion pill. By the Spring of 2023, states led by radical pro-abortion lawmakers began to propose so-called shield laws to prevent abortionists in those states from being prosecuted for sending abortion drugs into states where it is illegal. These laws do not protect women.
2025: Guttmacher Institute estimated a total of 1,129,900 abortions committed in 2025. That same year estimated abortion pill totals reached a staggering 734,435 annually (61,203 abortions by pill per month, 2,012 a day, 84 hourly, and one abortion pill abortion every 43 seconds). Guttmacher claimed: "Data from the Society of Family Planning shows that as of December 2025, more than one in four clinician-provided abortions in the United States were provided via telehealth."
2026: States began pushing back, filing lawsuits targeting shield laws.
The FDA's 2023 changes to abortion pill safety protocols (REMS) are likely the main culprit behind national abortion increases and the flood of pills entering even pro-life states. Adding to this are the failure to enforce federal prohibitions, and drug manufacturers who aid and abet illegal efforts while failing to police or decertify prescribers who are not following the rules.
Live Action News previously found that:
Beginning in 2017, the United States saw the end of a long-term decline in the number of abortions, with numbers beginning to tick upwards year after year. By 2020, abortions totaled 930,160 — an increase of nearly 8% from 2017.
By 2023, the year that mail order abortion pills were permanently enabled by the FDA, abortions had increased nearly 14% (13.85%) from 2020 and then increased again in 2025 by over 21% (21.47%).
Today the abortion pill makes up at least 65% (or more) of all abortions (an estimated 734K+ in 2025 alone) currently committed in the United States.
While shield laws profit Big Abortion, they are often harmful to pro-life states, to women, and deadly to the preborn lives they target.
A lawsuit filed by three states against shield law providers alleges defendants engaged in an "illegal enterprise" by "deliberately bypassing safeguards," "misrepresented the safety, efficacy, legality, and FDA status of the drugs they sell," left out "material information about serious complications, the limitations of remote screening, and what can happen when a woman needs emergency care."
The lawsuit displayed the victims:
The Plaintiff states claim that the listed individuals and organizations "made false or misleading representations concerning the safety, effectiveness, legality, risks, and appropriate use of abortion-inducing drugs, including minimizing potential complications and the need for in-person medical care.
The lawsuit states in part:
Plaintiff States are incurring classic quasi-sovereign harms within their borders. Their laws are intended to protect the lives of unborn babies in Plaintiff States from the moment of conception—and yet Defendants’ conduct terminates those lives in violation of Plaintiff States’ laws.
The States also claimed that due to illegal abortion pills flooding their borders, providers are treating abortion pill complications "on a daily basis," with complications like "hemorrhaging requiring blood transfusions," "incomplete abortions" requiring further treatment, blood transfusions, and more.
Abortion providers are shielded from accountability, which is likely the true agenda behind shield laws.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·Abortion Pill
Nancy Flanders
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·Abortion Pill
Carole Novielli
·