(Oregon Right to Life) — Online prescription of chemical abortions to residents of states with pro-life laws saw a sharp increase last year, highlighting a growing trend in online prescriptions that circumvent state laws and put women and babies at risk.
According to a report published in March by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, abortion providers providers prescribed chemical abortion drugs to approximately 91,000 people living in states with laws prohibiting all abortions. That’s up from 72,000 in 2024, a more than 25% increase.
The data also suggest that travel from states with pro-life laws to states that permit legal abortion declined last year compared to the year before (from about 74,000 to 62,000), seemingly indicating that more people are opting to order abortion pills online rather than travel out of state for in-person abortion services.
Overall, the Guttmacher report estimated that abortion providers nationwide carried out an estimated 1,126,000 abortions nationwide last year, up slightly from 1,124,000 in 2024.
The estimate represents the highest annual abortion rate since 2009.
The Guttmacher Institute’s latest report contributes to ongoing pro-life worries about the increased prevalence of abortion drugs nationwide, which undermines state laws and puts women and babies at risk.
Chemical abortion has swiftly overtaken surgical abortion as the most common method nationwide (at least 63% of all abortions are now carried out using abortion drugs nationwide). Pro-life groups have pointed out that the increased popularity of abortion drugs – thanks in large part to the elimination of federal regulations in recent years – has had the effect of undermining state laws banning abortion and putting women at increased risk of injury, coercion, or even death.
“Overall, this new Guttmacher report provides further evidence that stopping telehealth abortions needs to be a top priority for pro-lifers,” wrote Charlotte Lozier Institute associate scholar and Catholic University of America assistant professor Michael J. New in an article published by National Review.
In the article, New argued that the Guttmacher report shows that “pro-life laws are being undermined by the large and growing number of telehealth abortions,” and decried the “lack of action taken by Trump administration FDA on telehealth abortions” which, he said, “has been detrimental to the health of women and fatal to countless preborn children.”
The Guttmacher Institute report also hinted at an additional component that has pro-life advocates concerned about the health and safety of women and babies.
The organization noted that some abortions – including chemical abortions facilitated by community health networks, websites, and “international clinics” – have been excluded from the final number, so the “findings represent an underestimate of the total number of abortions nationally.”
A recent U.S. Senate investigation has raised the alarm about ““[n]on-U.S.-based online clinics” which allegedly “sell unapproved and misbranded chemical abortion drugs to Americans and often market the drugs past the FDA-approved 10-week limit.”
“As it did under the first Trump administration, FDA must use all of the tools at its disposal to protect women and children,” the committee said in a statement.
READ: U.S. Senate Committee Launches Investigation into Sales of Dangerous Chemical Abortion Drugs
The safety of mifepristone – the first in the chemical abortion regimen – is currently under review by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The review was triggered by a 2025 Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) study finding the adverse reaction rate associated with the drug to be over one in ten (10.93%), twenty-two times the one currently listed on its official FDA label.
As Oregon Right to Life has previously highlighted, federal regulations and safeguards on abortion drugs have been severely eroded over the past decade. In 2016, the FDA expanded the timeframe in which mifepristone could be prescribed during pregnancy and removed the requirement to report complications that do not result in death. In 2021, the FDA permitted the online prescription of mifepristone and its distribution through the mail. Local pharmacies were also authorized to dispense the drugs, and in January 2023, that permission was extended to retail pharmacies, including Walgreens and CVS.
Pro-life advocates have long raised the alarm that – in addition to their intended lethality for the unborn – abortion drugs pose serious risks to women.
Women may experience a number of well-known adverse events like hemorrhaging, infection, and incomplete abortion (the failure to fully expel the body of the deceased human being). Many are frequently left to deal with the results of their chemical abortion alone, including the sometimes traumatic delivery of their dead embryo (often in a toilet).
And the elimination of federal restrictions and the capability of providers to prescribe the drugs online have created additional risks.
Without a required ultrasound, women may be incorrectly prescribed abortion pills even if they have a later or ectopic pregnancy, placing them at risk of serious side effects or even death. Online prescription and distribution through the mail further increases the risk that bad actors may obtain the pills to carry out forced abortions. Examples highlighted by the pro-life news outlet Live Action include Robert Kawada, charged with misleading a woman into taking a chemical abortion drug under the pretense it was an iron pill in 2024; Jeffery Smith, who was convicted of attempted first-degree intentional homicide for slipping an abortion drug into his former girlfriend’s glass of water in 2022; and Justin Banta, a U.S. Department of Justice employee charged with capital murder for poisoning his girlfriend’s drink with mifepristone, among others.
A recent national poll found that 69% of respondents across the political spectrum agreed that “it makes sense for the FDA to bring back” the requirement for in-person doctors’ visits removed under the Biden administration.
