Abortions in Florida dropped by nearly a third when the state banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a report by a national policy and research organization.
"We found 27% fewer abortions provided by clinicians in Florida comparing the first halves of 2024 and 2025," said Isabel Docampo, a senior research associate at the progressive-leaning Guttmacher Institute.
"And that decline was about 12,000 cases, so quite large," she said, noting Florida change was the "the largest absolute change that we observed in clinician-provided abortions in any state" in that time period.
Florida used to be one of the most permissive states when it came to abortion, but after the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling in June 2022 that overturned the federal right to abortion, the Republican-led state enacted more restrictions.
First, Florida enacted a 15-week limit on abortion in July 2022. Then, in May 2024, the state enacted the Heartbeat Protection Act, which banned the procedure after six weeks, counting not from conception but from the first day of a woman's last period. The law includes narrow exceptions for the life of the mother or to save "a major bodily function."
The Guttmacher report examined care that women seek in clinics, as well as medication abortions provided via telehealth and virtual providers.
Nationwide, it found a 5% decline in abortion.
The study did not look at birth rates, although another recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a rise in birth rates in states that adopted six-week bans, particularly among women of color, those on Medicaid and the unmarried.
Immediately after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, out-of-state travel for abortion nearly doubled across the country, but the "preliminary findings released today demonstrate that this trend may be reversing," said Tuesday's Guttmacher report.
It found in the first six months of 2025, 74,490 people traveled to states without total bans to obtain abortion care, an 8% decline compared with the same period in 2024.
"We're seeing anecdotally that abortion funds and practical support networks are experiencing strains to their funding," said Docampo.
"So it may be that there's an increasingly limited pool of support available to facilitate out-of-state travel."
