More than 1.1 million unborn babies were killed in abortions last year, and mail-order abortions also increased — especially in states with pro-life laws, according to a new report.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute released a report this week showing an estimated 1,126,000 abortions in 2025, up slightly from 1,124,000 in 2024. The study does not include abortions provided outside of brick-and-mortar clinics and telehealth, such as international clinics and websites, meaning that the findings are “an underestimate of the total number of abortions nationally,” Guttmacher noted.
The slight increase is in part due to telehealth abortions increasing within 13 states that currently restrict abortion throughout pregnancy. The study found that the total number of telehealth abortions increased from 72,000 in 2024 to 91,000 in 2025.
At the same time, the number of women crossing state lines for abortions fell to 142,000 last year, down from 154,000 in 2024 and 170,000 in 2023, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional “right” to abortion invented under the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
“It makes sense that we’d see a decline in travel. Because people accessing abortion care through telehealth in general then no longer need to travel for care. So it’s not surprising, per se, but it is the first time that we’ve been able to put out specific numbers showing this shift,” Guttmacher data scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet told The Hill.
In 2023, Guttmacher estimated that medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions within the formal U.S. healthcare system. That percentage was up from an estimated 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in 2017. That report also did not account for abortion pills obtained through underground national and international networks, including those that send pills to women in states with abortion restrictions.
The booming mail-order abortion industry was largely enabled by the Biden administration’s FDA, which removed the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills in 2021 and allowed them to be sent via mail. That action, combined with shield laws in blue states, has allowed abortionists to mail abortion pills into red states that have laws protecting the unborn.
Republicans have demanded the FDA under President Donald Trump revoke the Biden regime’s mail-order abortion scheme, which it has yet to do. GOP lawmakers and pro-life advocates have also pressured the FDA to accelerate its safety review of mifepristone, the first drug used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen, after a shocking study released last April suggested a higher complication rate than previously reported.
As far as in-person abortions, some red states like Idaho and Tennessee have passed “abortion trafficking laws” to disincentivize adults from facilitating abortions for minors in blue states. Even so, states like Democrat-run Illinois have seen an overwhelming number of women from out of state looking to have their babies aborted.
In Illinois, 32,000 abortions were performed on out-of-state residents, “accounting for almost a quarter of the 142,000 people nationwide who traveled across state lines for care [sic] in 2025,” according to the report.
In North Carolina, at least 18,000 abortions were performed on women traveling from out of state, a shift which Guttmacher attributes to an increase in travel from the Southeast “in the wake of Florida’s six-week gestational duration ban.” The pro-abortion organization said the increase in North Carolina occurred despite the state having its own 12-week restriction and 72-hour waiting period.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
