Abortion-rights advocates march and rally in support of the Yes On 4 campaign in downtown Orlando, Florida, against the six-week ban that will appear on the on November ballot.Willie J. Allen Jr/Orlando Sentinel/ZUMA

Before Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, abortions in Florida were available until 24 weeks of pregnancy; soon afterward, a 15-week ban became law. Still, Florida remained an essential abortion haven for the Southeast. Then, on May 1, a six-week ban took effect, and the impact was immediate and drastic—and not just in the state, new data from the Guttmacher Institute shows. Clinician-provided abortions plunged in Florida by more than 30 percent in May and June, to an average of about 5,400 abortions per month. In contrast, during the first three months of the year, the state averaged about 8,000 abortions every month.

“Our data paint a vivid picture of the chaos and confusion caused by Florida’s six-week abortion ban,” Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher data scientist, said in a statement.

Nationally, the average number of abortions in May and June fell by more than 7 percent from the first three months of the year, according to Guttmacher’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study. More than a third of that drop is the direct consequence of the Florida ban, highlighting how important a role the state has played in abortion access throughout the South. In 2023, an estimated 9,000 out-of-state patients traveled to Florida to obtain an abortion, with the largest number of them coming from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia—all states where draconian abortion laws have been put in place........

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