An estimated 142,000 women traveled across state lines for abortions in 2025, according to the Guttmacher Institute, as state bans continued to reshape access to reproductive care three years after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
The number of interstate travelers declined from about 154,000 in 2024 and more than 169,000 in 2023. But for women living in states with total bans, obtaining an abortion away from home has become a substantially longer and more expensive undertaking, while telehealth prescriptions have emerged as an increasingly important alternative.
Women who left states with total abortion bans between June 2022 and June 2024 traveled an average of 11.3 hours to obtain care, compared with 2.8 hours for patients who received abortions in their home states before bans took effect. Overnight stays jumped to 58% from 5%, while average travel expenses more than doubled to $372 from $179.
The transformation followed the Supreme Court's June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion regulation to the states. By the end of 2025, 13 states had total bans, while six others prohibited most abortions after six or 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The physical infrastructure for abortion care has largely disappeared in the states with total bans. None of the 13 had a brick-and-mortar clinic providing abortion services by December 2025, compared with a combined 62 clinics in those states in 2020.
That shift has increased pressure on nonprofit abortion funds that pay for transportation, lodging, childcare and other expenses associated with traveling for care. The National Network of Abortion Funds said average assistance per person more than doubled to roughly $396 in 2025 from $188 in 2022.
Nearly one-third of 97 abortion funds surveyed said they had temporarily suspended their hotlines because of problems including insufficient funding, employee burnout, legal restrictions, security risks and political pressure.
"The need is growing even faster than available resources," said Poonam Dreyfus-Pai, interim executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds.
At the same time, abortion pills delivered through telehealth are changing the geography of access. Among residents of the 13 states with total bans, the number traveling elsewhere for abortions fell to 62,000 in 2025, while telehealth provision into those states rose to 91,000 from 74,000 in 2024.
Eight states have adopted so-called shield laws designed to protect clinicians who provide abortion medication to patients in states where the procedure is restricted. Those laws have increasingly collided with attempts by Republican-led states to enforce their abortion statutes beyond their borders.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued New York physician Margaret Carpenter in December 2024, alleging that she mailed abortion medication to a woman in Collin County, Texas. After Carpenter didn't appear, a Texas judge entered a $113,000 default judgment against her in February 2025 and barred her from prescribing abortion medication to Texans.
Carpenter also was indicted by a Louisiana grand jury in January 2025 over abortion pills allegedly sent to a pregnant minor. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed an extradition warrant, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul refused to extradite her.
Texas subsequently attempted to enforce its judgment in New York. Taylor Bruck, then acting clerk of Ulster County, rejected the filing twice under New York's shield law, prompting Paxton to sue him. Justice David Gandin dismissed the petition in October 2025, ruling that Carpenter's conduct was legal in New York; Texas appealed in May 2026, and the dispute remains pending.
Research predating Dobbs suggests that interstate travel can impose significant financial burdens even before accounting for the longer journeys created by newer bans. A survey of 675 patients during the first half of 2019 found that people traveling out of state spent an average of $1,367 out of pocket, compared with $411 among patients who remained in their states.
Researchers classified the costs as catastrophic for 65% of interstate travelers, meaning expenses consumed at least 40% of monthly income remaining after basic living needs. Separate research by Sarah Miller, Laura Wherry and Diana Greene Foster found that women denied abortions because they arrived beyond a clinic's gestational limit experienced a $1,750 increase in debt at least 30 days overdue, or 78% above their pre-birth average.
The policy changes have also been associated with shifts in births and infant mortality. Two studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in February 2025 estimated roughly 22,180 more births than expected between 2021 and 2023 across the first states adopting total or six-week abortion bans.
Those researchers reported infant mortality of 6.26 deaths per 1,000 live births in the affected states, compared with an expected rate of 5.93, representing an estimated 478 additional infant deaths.
Isaac Maddow-Zimet, the Guttmacher Institute data scientist who led the travel research, said interstate travel remains "a critical option for many," particularly for patients who need abortions later in pregnancy. Mifepristone, one of the drugs commonly used for medication abortion, is approved for use through 10 weeks of gestation.
