As part of the November 2024 elections, voters in 10 states considered ballot measures that would expand or protect access to abortion, and seven of those states passed their amendments. Missouri voters overturned the state’s abortion ban, enshrining reproductive care into the state’s constitution. Teen Vogue compiled a list of all 10 ballot measures and their outcomes here.
Where Is Abortion Legal
According to CNN, as of October 2024, abortion is allowed in 29 states and the District of Columbia. These states are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In these states, laws protect abortion either up to viability or throughout pregnancy.
Eleven states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, and Vermont — have amended their state constitutions to protect the right to abortion following the decision to overturn Roe. And in two states, Kentucky and Kansas, measures seeking to curtail the right to abortion failed.
Currently, nearly half of states across the US almost completely ban or restrict abortion access to earlier in a pregnancy than Roe allowed. In this context, states where the procedure is legal have experienced an influx of patients from states that have banned abortion. Access continues to vary widely based on where people live and what financial and social resources they have.
Yet, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study from March 2024, “an estimated 1,037,000 abortions occurred in the formal health care system in 2023”—an 11% increase in abortions nationwide since 2020.
This increase may be the result of a number of factors, including wider access to medication abortion care through telehealth (which accounted for 63% of abortions in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute), increased abortion fund support, and “shield laws” in various states that protect healthcare providers from facing legal repercussions for providing abortion care for out-of-state patients.
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