Florida’s restrictions on abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy has led to the first decline in abortions since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, a result hoped for by supporters of the ban.
The statewide total of 60,755 abortions in 2024 was down 28% from 84,052 in 2023, according to reports to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
Florida's three largest counties by population, Miami-Dade, Broward and Hillsborough, each reported declines of more than 20%. The steepest decline was 54% in Dixie County in North Central Florida.
Only two counties, Calhoun in the Panhandle and Glades west of Lake Okeechobee, reported more abortions in 2024 than in 2023. The numbers are reported to the state by health care providers and reflect where patients lived at the time of the abortion.
The number of non-Florida residents who got abortions in Florida last year fell 51% to 3,754, the data show. That was the first decline in five years. Abortion totals since the end of 2024 are not publicly available.
The six-week law was passed by Florida’s Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, but legal challenges stalled its implementation until May. Florida previously outlawed abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The 15-week law began in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to control abortion access.
The six-week law includes some exceptions. An abortion may occur past six weeks if the life of the mother is at risk, if there are fatal fetal abnormalties before the third trimester or if the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or human trafficking if the mother provides documentation and the pregnancy is at 15 weeks or less.
Florida’s initial 15-week cutoff was the least restrictive of any state in the Southeast. As a result, there was a 15% jump in out-of-state visitors getting abortions in Florida from 2022 to 2023, according to state data. Abortions overall ticked upward by 1.8%. DeSantis complained that Florida had become a destination for “abortion tourism.”
There now are fewer differences between Florida and other states. Georgia and South Carolina also have six-week bans, while Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas enacted total bans with limited exceptions. North Carolina has had a 12-week ban since 2023. Virginia still allows abortion up to viability, preventing it with some exceptions past 26 weeks.
The number of Florida residents who had abortions and live in counties that border Alabama fell 44% in 2024. The number of residents who had abortions and live in counties next to Georgia declined 19%.
Trenece Robertson was able to get an abortion in 2019 when her pregnancy was dated at six weeks and five days, she said. She lived in Louisiana at the time and was visiting Tallahassee. “I don’t think most people’s stories are like that anymore,” she said.
Robertson, 25, now works as a reproductive rights organizer in Tallahassee. She saw the boost in out-of-state abortion patients when Florida had a 15-week ban, followed by a sharp drop since the six-week ban took effect. Florida women often are trying to get abortions right before the legal deadline, she said.
Florida is no longer an access point for abortion in the southern U.S., said Michelle Quesada, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, which offers abortion care in Jacksonville, Miami, Tallahassee and elsewhere.
Those clinics also now try to help Florida women who can’t get an abortion because of the six-week ban travel to states with looser restrictions. More than 1,000 women received assistance from last May to December, Quesada said. The monthly total has surged to about 130 from fewer than a dozen before the ban.
Women also are visiting Planned Parenthood clinics earlier than before, sometimes before a pregnancy can be detected, Quesada said.
“They have unprotected sex, and they’re freaking out and calling to make an appointment,” she said. “They don’t understand how this works, that you won’t know if you’re pregnant until you’ve missed a period.”
Similar shifts in how women approach their reproductive health care are happening at First Care Women’s Clinic, which “empowers women facing crisis pregnancies to choose life,” according to its Facebook page. The West Palm Beach clinic provides pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and referrals to adoption agencies.
David Heyman, the executive director of First Care, said women are paying more attention to their menstrual cycles and fertility when they visit the clinic. Those are signs that Florida’s law is affecting women’s behavior toward seeking an abortion, he said. For example, some women are seeking pregnancy-regulated education.
The six-week lawwas proposed by state Sen. Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce. During the bill’s Senate floor vote in April 2023, she said life begins at conception. As a result, she said, abortion is the leading cause of child deaths in Florida.
“We’re so far from safe, legal and rare,” Grall said. “We have normalized and sterilized the taking of life as health care.”
Sen. Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami, said before the floor vote that she hoped a six-week ban would encourage women to seek out adoption or family-planning aid instead of abortion.
“I believe it will go a long way to help change hearts and minds influenced by a decade of anti-life culture that has demoted and devalued the important role of family,” Calatayud said.
Calatayud and Grall didn't respond to requests for comment on the steep decline in abortions in Florida.
Florida's slow but steady increase in abortion restrictions since 2022 gave abortion rights organizations more time to raise money for people seeking abortions in anticipation of the six-week ban, while educators promoted campaigns about birth control and pregnancy symptoms. Efforts by anti-abortion activists included preparing to fight Amendment 4, which would have overturned the six-week ban. Voters defeated the measure in November.
Anti-abortion supporters like Heyman are hoping to see a steeper decline in Florida in the coming year, he said. The number of abortions fell far more sharply in Texas after they enacted a six-week ban. It had a decline of 58% to 22,232 abortions in 2022 from 2021, according to Texas Health and Human Services. Texas now bans almost all abortions.
“Usually, culture changes, and laws change to reflect those cultural changes,” said Heyman, First Care’s executive director. “But the opposite can be true. Laws do impact culture.”
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at sienaduncan@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.
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