Patterns of Travel for Abortion Care Continued to Shift in 2025

Both Telehealth and Interstate Travel Remain Critical Avenues for Access

The case research offered right here illustrate two main contributors to shifts in journey for abortion care lately within the United States: the expansion of telehealth entry and narrowing choices for in-person care previous six weeks within the South and Southeast.

Telehealth has change into an increasingly common mode of access for abortion care nationally, and has performed a very important function in states with complete, six-, or twelve- week bans on abortion provision. In 2025, there have been roughly 142,000 abortions supplied through telehealth to those states, with the plurality (42,000) supplied to residents of Texas. For many individuals, telehealth has probably preempted the necessity to journey a number of hundred miles for care, with its attendant monetary and logistical burdens. This shift has not gone unnoticed by anti-abortion lawmakers: in 2025, Texas handed House Bill 7, a legislation that permits non-public residents to convey lawsuits towards clinicians for manufacturing, mailing or distributing treatment abortion tablets to people within the state. This legislation is a part of a rising development of states in search of to criminalize or create civil penalties for the sale, buy or distribution of treatment abortion tablets. Halfway by 2026, 21 states have launched 58 such payments, and 4 have been enacted (in Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota). These legal guidelines are largely being proposed in states that have already got complete abortion bans, and their objective seems to be rising the specter of legal responsibility for protect legislation suppliers. Although these suppliers have up to now been in a position to climate such assaults, this rising development in state abortion legislation underscores the pivotal function of telehealth in preserving and increasing abortion entry in states with complete bans.

In Texas, nevertheless, as in lots of different states with complete or early gestational bans, many individuals proceed to journey out of state for care. The causes that individuals journey for abortion care—even within the context of broadening entry to telehealth companies—are complicated and multifaceted. Some folks may be unaware that telehealth is an option for them; even pre-Dobbs, most people did not know the legal status of abortion in their state, and the authorized panorama has change into solely extra sophisticated within the years since. Others might desire or have to entry in-person care at a clinic—both as a result of they’re later in being pregnant (many telehealth suppliers provide care solely as much as 11‒14 weeks’ gestation); desire or want procedural care; or need an in-person care expertise.

At the identical time, choices for in-person care have sharply narrowed in a lot of the Southeast on account of Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which has contributed to the better distances folks have to journey for in-person care. These modifications probably have a disproportionate influence on teams that already face broader limitations to well being care entry and particular limitations to abortion care. For instance, Floridians underneath age 18 who’re unable to contain a guardian haven’t any nearer choices for in-person abortion care than the District of Columbia, on account of parental notification legal guidelines within the nearer states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Travel additionally requires important assets, past the price of the abortion itself, and whereas many are in a position to depend on abortion funds, sensible assist networks and others to fill gaps and supply assist, it might probably nonetheless symbolize a considerable burden. (In 2025, the member funds of the National Network of Abortion Funds distributed virtually $15 million in sensible assist to greater than 25,000 folks accessing abortion care; nevertheless, funding prices elevated considerably from 2024, and it’s not unusual for funds to intermittently pause support due to funding constraints.)

Travel patterns throughout the United States will probably proceed to shift in coming years, as coverage modifications in a single state have ripple results in lots of others. In the dynamic panorama of abortion coverage, it’s important to protect a number of routes of entry: strengthening each the telehealth protections and the journey assist infrastructure that collectively allow many individuals dwelling in states with complete bans or restrictions to proceed to entry important abortion care.

Methodology

Estimates offered on this report are from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study, a undertaking estimating the variety of clinician-provided abortions in every US state since January 2023. It collects knowledge on procedural and medicine abortions supplied at brick-and-mortar well being amenities (akin to clinics or physician’s places of work), in addition to treatment abortions supplied by US telehealth suppliers (together with these supplied to residents of states with complete bans). Abortions are counted as having been supplied within the state during which a affected person had a process or the place tablets have been acquired.

Estimates are generated by a statistical mannequin that mixes knowledge collected from ongoing month-to-month samples of US abortion suppliers with historic knowledge on the caseloads of US suppliers; underlying code for this mannequin and an in depth methodology appendix can be found at https://osf.io/k4x7t/overview.