The abortion rate in California rose to its highest level in a decade in 2023, as Democrats in the state passed legislation aimed at making the state an abortion haven in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Abortionists performed approximately 178,400 legal abortions in 2023, which is up 24,000 or 16 percent from 2020, The Sacramento Bee reported, citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
“We don’t actually know what is behind the increase,” Guttmacher principal research scientist Rachel Jones said. “We do know that California has been a model, in a lot of ways, in trying to increase access to abortion.”
Guttmacher found that California’s abortion rate had precipitous fall for decades, from 44 legal abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 in 1991 to 16 legal abortions per 1,000 women in 2017, according to the report.
The abortion rate then began to rise in 2017 and continued to do so after the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs decision. The Dobbs decision overturned the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade — which had created a right to kill unborn babies via abortion for 50 years — and returned the issue of abortion to individual states.
Following the Dobbs decision, nearly two dozen states have banned or restricted abortions. At the same time, many Democrat-led states have become more pro-abortion, including California.
For example, California voters passed an amendment in 2022 that enshrines the right to abortion throughout pregnancy in the state constitution. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also signed off legislation shielding abortionists who perform abortions on women from states with pro-life laws and enhanced privacy protections for women who get abortions. The state also began allowing certified nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners to perform first trimester abortions and began a “Reproductive Health Services Corps,” to train more abortionists.
Guttmacher found that at least 5,200 women came to California from other states to have legal abortions in 2023, which accounts for roughly three percent of abortions in the state, according to the report.
Even so, other states saw far more women coming from out-of-state for abortions, typically “those that are adjacent to state where abortion was pretty much completely banned,” Jones said.
“For example, about 12,500 people came to Kansas from other states for an abortion. About 14,500 came to New Mexico. About 36,800 came to Illinois,” according to the report.
California had the ninth-highest rate of abortions in the United States in 2023, Guttmacher found.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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