Why Abortion Rates Are Up
February 6, 2026
In 2019, the conservative demographer Lyman Stone demonstrated that, contrary to the claims of some liberal commentators, limitations on abortion access lowered abortion rates. In every case Stone examined, from Austria to Korea to Texas, abortion restriction in the law preceded a decline in total abortions. But after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, the opposite appeared to happen: America’s total abortion rate increased, from an average of 79,600 abortions per month in 2022 to 98,880 per month in early 2025, according to estimates created from the Society of Family Planning.
The reason for this is not complicated. The thirteen states that restricted or banned abortion saw a stark decline in June 2022. The thirty-seven others, several of which added abortion to their state constitutions as a right, and some of which introduced incentives for abortion tourism from neighboring states, saw an increase.
