Earlier this month, Planned Parenthood Keystone complained about the number of abortion facilities that have closed in Pennsylvania, saying that abortion isn’t accessible enough within the state. However, recent statistics show that the number of abortions have actually increased in Pennsylvania.
According to statistics released by the Guttmacher Institute, abortions have increased 17% in Pennsylvania since 2020, with 37,900 abortions committed in the state in 2023. The overwhelming majority of these abortions were sought by Pennsylvania residents, with 2,310 abortions committed on out-of-state residents who hailed from Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey.
Altogether, out-of-state residents comprised just over 6% of all 2023 Pennsylvania abortions. Allegedly, this is a 40% increase prior to Roe v. Wade‘s reversal, according to ABC27.
“We do anticipate additional states taking action to ban abortion, and that will lead to more folks coming to Pennsylvania for care,” Planned Parenthood Keystone President and CEO Melissa Reed said.
Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates had previously complained about the presence of fewer abortion facilities in Pennsylvania, even though Planned Parenthood’s mega facilities are known to put smaller, locally-owned facilities out of business.
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“Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania, but it sure as hell is not accessible. We had more than 145 abortion clinics in Pennsylvania when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Now, we have less than 20, and five of them provide medication abortions only,” said Signe Espinoza, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates. “Those clinics started really closing after laws were passed in Pennsylvania — waves of what we call ‘targeted restrictions on abortion providers’ which are designed to close [a clinic] or make it way more difficult for it to operate. The opposition has been chipping away at access to abortion care. In such a hostile environment, in such a restrictive state, it’s been really difficult to expand access to care.”
However, the number of abortion facilities has decreased nationwide since just after Roe v. Wade became law in 1973, not just in Pennsylvania. And this number began to drop long before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
According to a 2022 Operation Rescue report on the state of abortion facilities in the U.S., “In 1991, there were 2,176 abortion facilities in the U.S. Since that time, the number of abortion facilities have decreased a remarkable 68 percent.” And as the popularity of chemical abortion (the abortion pill) has grown to comprise the majority of abortions, more facilities have moved away from offering surgical abortions — especially Planned Parenthood, which according to Operation Rescue, now commits 78% of all chemical abortions in the country (as of 2022). (Some individuals are also now obtaining the pills from online dispensaries, which do not require any scans for gestational age or tests of any kind.)
Planned Parenthood is also reported by Operation Rescue to comprise 55% of all “abortion clinics” in the country — even after years of consolidating its affiliates and shutting down abortion facilities of its own accord to make “more money.”
As for the laws regulating abortion facilities, those are quite necessary in Pennsylvania, where complications from abortion were found to have tripled over the last five years — even as lawmakers seek to do away with such laws, which aim to protect women and hold the abortion industry to safety standards. The increase in abortions reveals that there have also been no problems with the accessibility of abortion within the state, which has a stridently pro-abortion governor.
“I think it’s a tragedy of epic proportions,” Maria Gallagher, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, told ABC27. “Every abortion takes an innocent, unrepeatable human life. I think we need to address the common problems that afflict pregnant women – like lack of childcare, education or support.”
