Fewer people crossed state lines to obtain abortions in 2024 than a year earlier, both nationwide and in Nevada, a new survey has found.

The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, estimates in a report released Tuesday that the overall number of clinician-provided abortions in states where it’s legal rose by less than 1 percent from 2023 to 2024.

But the number of people crossing state lines for abortions dropped by about 9 percent.

In Nevada, there were 16,870 abortions reported in 2024, an increase of 5.7 percent from the year prior. Of those, 8.8 percent of abortions were for patients traveling from out of state — marking a 47.4 percent drop from 2023.

The report, based on a monthly survey of providers, is the latest look at how the abortion landscape in the U.S. has evolved since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022 in a ruling that eliminated a national constitutional right to abortion and opened the door to state bans and restrictions.

Macy Haverda, executive director of the Wild West Access Fund of Nevada, which provides money to pay for clients’ abortions and travel, told The Nevada Independent she believes travel could be decreasing because individuals are receiving the abortion pill by mail.

“I think a lot of states have found ways to get access to abortion through that. And I think that's a really amazing technology that isn't being utilized enough,” Haverda said in a phone interview. “I think it's also something that people try to criminalize far too often.”

The total number of abortions continued to rise

Guttmacher estimates there were 1.04 million abortions in 2024, up about 1 percent from its total the previous year.

Multiple studies have found that the total number of abortions in the U.S. has risen since Dobbs, despite some states implementing bans.

Twelve states currently enforce abortion bans with limited exceptions at all stages of pregnancy. Four more have bans that kick in after about six weeks, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. In Nevada, individuals can seek abortions through 24 weeks of pregnancy. 

Guttmacher’s tally does not capture self-managed abortions such as people obtaining abortion pills from community networks, foreign pharmacies or through telehealth from medical providers in states that have laws intended to protect those who send pills into places with bans. There’s a court battle over the constitutionality of such laws. But another survey found that the number of telehealth pills being sent into states with bans has been growing and accounted for about 1 in 10 abortions in the U.S. by the summer of 2024.

Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at Guttmacher, said even though the number of abortions is up, it’s likely some people who would like to end their pregnancies are not able to.

“We know that some people are accessing abortion through telehealth,” he said. “And we know it’s not an option for everybody.”

Travel for abortions declined, but remained steady in Nevada

The number of people crossing state lines for abortions dropped to about 155,000 from nearly 170,000.

The year-to-year impact varies by state.

Haverda told The Nevada Independent the percentage of the organization’s clients traveling to Nevada for abortions has remained steady. From June 2024 to April 2025, travel rates varied from 15 percent to 30 percent of their total clients. 

She noted that travel rates dipped when a judge blocked Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban at the beginning of March.

Haverda said the organization has seen an increase in Nevadans leaving the state for abortions because of the state law that allows for a manslaughter charge if a pregnancy is terminated after 24 weeks.Some states allow abortions later in a pregnancy or do not limit when it can take place. 

“Up to 26 [weeks] a lot of them will go to California,” Haverda said in a phone interview. “But otherwise they're going to New Mexico or to the East Coast.”

The Nevada Legislature failed to act on a bill (SB139) that could have overturned the law. Haverda said she has “very strong feelings” about it dying.

“It would have been extremely helpful to not be the only state that criminalizes people for that,” Haverda said. “I think we're going to see a lot more people end up in situations where they might have to make some really hard choices.” 

After other groups that help defray abortion costs announced budget cuts last summer and reduced capacity to provide grants to clients because donations had declined, Wild West’s monthly call volume jumped from 77 to 144 in July and 157 in August. 

“For the first time, our weekly abortion funding budget failed to meet client needs,” she said.

In July 2024, the organization provided $17,025 in funding to clients, which was a 61 percent increase from April 2024. 

Haverda was tracking two bills in the Legislature that she worried could discourage people from traveling to Nevada for an abortion. SB415, which is now dead, would have designated traffic enforcement systems to take photos of license plates, “making it possible for a traveler to be criminalized upon return to their home state,” she said. 

But Haverda is still worried about AB402, which authorizes cameras to be installed in temporary construction zones. 

“Any sort of surveillance is not going to be helpful for people in this sort of really, reactive and  criminalized state we're in right now,” Haverda said. 

As for other states, about 1 in 8 abortions in Florida in the first half of 2023 were provided to people coming from out of state. By the second half of 2024 — when a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy took effect — only about 1 in 50 were for people from another state.

More people traveled to states including Virginia and New York after the Florida law took hold.

A drop in people traveling to Minnesota could be linked to abortions being offered again in clinics in Wisconsin.

Most abortions in Kansas are provided to people from elsewhere and the number grew as clinic capacity expanded.

Obstacles under bans affect some women more than others

A working paper released in March provided different insight into the impact of the bans.

It found that birth rates rose from 2020 to 2023 in counties farther from abortion clinics. Rates rose faster for Black and Hispanic women, those with lower education levels, and people who are unmarried.

“The takeaway is that distance still matters,” said Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economic professor and one of the authors of the working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “It really wasn’t obvious that that would be the case.”

“These bans are more than just policies; these are direct attacks on bodily autonomy,” said Regina Davis Moss, president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda.

The bans also exacerbate the huge disparities in maternal mortality for Black women in the U.S, she said. Black women died around the time of childbirth at a rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women in 2023.

“We’re going to be faced with increasing numbers of births, which is going to increase the maternal mortality rate, the infant mortality rate and inequities in care,” she said. “It’s very upsetting and sad.”

Bree Wallace, director of case management at the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund in Florida, which helps with the logistics and costs of abortions, said people who consider getting an abortion don’t always know their options.

“Many people don’t know their choices or think that it’s just not possible to go out of state,” she said. “A lot of people hear ‘ban’ or ‘six-week ban’ in their state and that’s it.”