Planned Parenthood Reports 375,000 Abortions in FY2021 Ahead of Landmark Supreme Court Abortion Ruling

An ultrasound machine sits next to an exam table in an examination room at abortion provider Whole Woman's Health of South Bend in South Bend, Ind., on June 19, 2019. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Abortion provider Planned Parenthood estimated it terminated 374,155 pregnancies between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, the second-highest number of abortions the organization has recorded in a single-year period.

Planned Parenthood published its annual report (pdf) for 2021-2022 this week, describing its various services through the 2021 fiscal year.

According to the report, Planned Parenthood provided approximately 9 million services to around 2.13 million people, including 374,155 abortion procedures during fiscal year 2021. The report offers a snapshot of its services before a new U.S. Supreme Court decision, allowing states to set more abortion restrictions.

The 374,155 abortions Planned Parenthood conducted through the 2021 fiscal year represent only a 2.45 percent drop from the record-setting 383,460 abortions Planned Parenthood recorded in 2020-2021 (pdf).

The Supreme Court ruled in the “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization” case in June of last year that the various U.S. states could regulate aspects of abortion that are not already codified under federal law. Following this Supreme Court decision, several states began imposing stricter limits and even near-total bans on abortions at the state level.

The new Planned Parenthood report lamented the Supreme Court’s “Dobbs” decision, which overturned previous abortion precedents set in “Roe v. Wade” and “Planned Parenthood v. Casey.”

“This was the year the worst happened. We knew it was coming. We were prepared. We had to be,” the report states. “Losing the constitutional right to abortion was still heartbreaking—for patients, for providers, for the communities we serve. But we’ve faced challenges before, and we’ve never given up. We won’t start now. WE’RE RELENTLESS.”

The Planned Parenthood report said that in states where abortions were more heavily restricted, “Patients came to their appointments expecting to take a pill only to learn they were just days or even hours too far into their pregnancy and had to make plans to get that pill two states away.”

“Young victims of abuse were forced to travel hundreds of miles to get abortion care,” the organization said.

It remains to be seen just how heavily Planned Parenthood’s abortion services will have been impacted following the Dobbs decision.

The Society of Family Planning (SFP)—a non-profit organization that studies “abortion and contraception science” that has argued (pdf) for increased access to abortion medications—published a report (pdf) earlier this month detailing the impact the Dobbs decision has had on abortion throughout the United States. According to the SFP report, there were 32,260 cumulative fewer abortions between July and December 2022 based on a comparison of abortion trends before and after the Dobbs decision; that amounts to 5,377 fewer abortions per month in the first six months after the new Supreme Court abortion decision.

The Guttmacher Institute—a group that advocates for increased access to abortion—estimated that the United States recorded approximately 930,160 legal abortions in 2020, meaning Planned Parenthood accounts for about 40 percent of all legal abortions performed within the U.S.

Planned Parenthood’s Other Services

In addition to the 2.45 percent drop in abortions between the fiscal year 2020-2021, the Planned Parenthood report showed a decline in other services like post-miscarriage care and adoption referrals.

Planned Parenthood recorded 2,653 miscarriage care procedures in its latest annual figures, compared with 2,793 in the year prior—a 5.4 percent drop.

Planned Parenthood recorded 1,803 adoption referrals in the new report, compared to 1,940 the year prior—a 7.2 percent drop.

The organization’s prenatal service visits dropped 29 percent, with 6,244 prenatal visits recorded in the new report, compared to 8,775 the year prior.

Pregnancy tests conducted by the organization also fell from 949,271 in the fiscal year 2020 to 914,116 in the fiscal year 2021—a 3.7 percent drop.

Planned Parenthood lists a massive 176.6 percent spike in unspecified “other procedures,” recording 256,550 of these procedures in its new report. The year prior, the organization recorded 15,902  unspecified procedures and 17,791 the year before that. NTD News reached out to Planned Parenthood for more details on this particular metric but did not receive a response before this article was published.

From NTD News