Cross-State Abortion Travel Is Declining. That’s Not the Win You Think It Is.
The Guttmacher Institute just released its full-year 2025 abortion data, and the headline sounds like progress: cross-state travel for abortion is declining.
Down from a peak of 170,000 in 2023 to 142,000 in 2025. Travel from total-ban states dropped from 74,000 to 62,000.
If you’re someone who tracks these numbers—and I am—the natural reaction is:
“Good. The system is working.”
It’s not.
What the Data Actually Says
Here’s what the data actually says: 1,126,000 abortions were provided by clinicians in the United States in 2025.
That’s the highest number since 2009. It’s virtually unchanged from 2024.
And while fewer women are crossing state lines, telehealth provision to ban states surged from 72,000 to 91,000 in a single year.
Women aren’t traveling less because they found support. They’re traveling less because they found a screen.
This Isn’t Policy. It’s Arithmetic.
Let me be direct about what this means.
Four years after Dobbs, with 13 states holding total bans, the legal restriction strategy has not reduced the number of abortions. It has rearranged the logistics.
Women who used to drive six hours now order pills online through shield-law providers in other states.
The geography changed. The outcome didn’t.
This isn’t a political argument.
It’s arithmetic.
The Number That Should Stop the Conversation
6 in 10 women who end a pregnancy say they would have carried to term with adequate emotional and financial support.
That’s peer-reviewed research (Reardon et al., Cureus, 2023).
Applied to last year’s numbers, that’s roughly 675,000 women who didn’t want to end their pregnancies—but felt they had no other option.
675,000 women.
Not making an ideological choice.
Making survival math.
What She Actually Needs
She’s 23, staring at a positive test at 2 AM, with $400 in her account and a partner who just walked out.
She doesn’t need a law.
She doesn’t need a telehealth link to a pill provider in another state.
She needs someone to show up.
With real financial help. Real case management. A real plan that takes her from crisis to stability.
That someone doesn’t exist at scale. Not yet.
The Infrastructure Problem
There are 4,000 pregnancy centers in America.
That sounds like scale.
It’s distribution.
Supply-side scale is not demand-side scale.
From a woman’s perspective at 2 AM, searching her phone in a panic, those 4,000 centers are invisible.
There is no national brand she recognizes. No unified intake system. No coordination across a fragmented patchwork of local organizations.
No system that actually works for her in the moment she needs it.
Supply vs. Demand
The Guttmacher data confirms what we’ve been saying at Her First Women’s Health since we launched:
Legal restriction is a supply-side strategy.
It addresses availability.
It does nothing about why women feel they need an abortion in the first place.
And when you only work the supply side, the demand finds a new route.
It always does.
This year it was telehealth.
Next year it’ll be something else.
The demand-side question has never been seriously addressed at national scale.
Until now.
The Third Lane: Support-First
Her First Women’s Health is a support-first platform built for the 6-in-10—women who want to carry but lack the infrastructure to say yes.
We’re not in the business of arguments.
We’re in the business of showing up.
24/7 access. A dedicated Support Guide—one person, her person—who walks with her from intake through her child’s third birthday.
Direct financial assistance. Healthcare coordination. Housing.
The whole picture.
Proof of Concept
- 18.8% aided ad recall among women 18–29 in OKC and Tulsa (Shepard Research)
- 9.56 / 10 client satisfaction
- 16 women who came to us intending to end a pregnancy carried to term after receiving real support
Those 16 women are the proof of concept.
They’re the answer to the question the Guttmacher data keeps asking:
What happens when you actually give a woman a reason to believe she can do this?
She says yes.
When she has support, she says yes.
The 84% Consensus
84% of Americans—across the political spectrum—support a woman’s right to keep her baby when that’s what she wants.
That’s the 2026 Knights of Columbus–Marist Poll.
This is not a 50/50 issue.
It’s an 80/20 consensus.
Possibly the only one in the entire conversation about pregnancy in America.
A Different Conversation
Her First operates in a third lane.
Not pro-life.
Not pro-choice.
Pro-woman.
We don’t engage in the debate about law.
We build infrastructure for women.
Different conversation entirely.
The Real Question
The Guttmacher numbers will generate the usual cycle:
One side will celebrate the travel decline.
The other will sound alarms about telehealth expansion.
Both will miss the point.
The point is that 1,126,000 women ended pregnancies last year—and the majority of them didn’t want to.
They wanted support.
They wanted someone in their corner.
They wanted a way to say yes.
We’re building that way.
Oklahoma proved it works. Texas is next.
Final Thought
The question isn’t whether restriction reduces travel.
The question is whether we’re going to keep rearranging the logistics of a problem—or finally build the support infrastructure that solves it.
600,000 women a year are waiting for the answer.
Brett Attebery is the founder and CEO of Her First Women’s Health, a national support-first platform serving women facing unexpected pregnancies. Learn more at herfirstwomenshealth.org.
