Abortion: More Restrictions, More Access

By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz

Well, this wasn’t part of the plan.

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs decision, states like Indiana rushed to pass some of the strictest abortion bans in the country. Victory laps were taken. Press conferences were held. The phrase “most pro-life state in the nation” got thrown around like candy at a county fair.

And yet… abortions are up. Way up. Not just in blue coastal strongholds—but nationally. Even right here in the Midwest.

I’m not making a call here on whether abortion is right or wrong. That’s a theological, ethical, or barstool argument depending on who you’re talking to. I’m just dealing with the facts—and the facts say: the more states restrict abortion access, the more people find ways around it. Turns out necessity really is the mother of invention.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the U.S. saw 1.14 million abortions in 2024—up from 1.03 million in 2023, and around 930,000 back in 2020. That’s a 25% increase in four years. And these aren’t back-alley procedures—they’re clinician-reported, legally documented, in many cases out-of-state or online.

So what happened? Easy: people adapted.

First, states like Illinois, California, and New York passed “shield laws” that protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills across state lines via telehealth. Translation: a woman in Indiana can now consult with a doctor in New York, get a prescription, and receive abortion pills in the mail—while her state legislature is still busy high-fiving itself.

In 2020, about 4% of abortions happened via telemedicine. By 2024? Over 25%. Pills-by-mail have become the DoorDash of reproductive health care. If the intent was to make abortions harder to get, let’s just say: mission not accomplished.

Second, people are hitting the road. In 2024 alone, more than 150,000 women traveled to another state for abortion care. Illinois, for example, saw a 71% increase from 2020 to 2023. Clinics in Michigan, Ohio, and even Kansas are being flooded with out-of-state patients. Some of them report that 70% of their caseloads now come from places with bans—including Indiana.

Third, support networks have stepped up. Need gas money? There’s a fund for that. Need help finding a clinic? There’s a website for that. Need legal support after your home state tries to sue you for exercising your rights elsewhere? There’s a lawyer for that, too.

So let’s be honest: bans don’t eliminate abortion. They just make it more logistically complicated, more financially burdensome, and a whole lot more unequal.

Who bears the brunt of this patchwork? Poor women. Rural women. Women of color. In other words, the same folks who often get steamrolled by the system to begin with.

And Indiana? Oh, Indiana. We had our moment. After Dobbs, we saw a spike in procedures—likely a “last call” rush before the ban kicked in. Then the numbers dropped, clinics shut down, and providers fled. But women didn’t stop getting abortions—they just started getting them somewhere else.

Proponents of Indiana’s law proudly claimed they wanted to make us “the most pro-life state in the country.”

Well… mission accomplished—on paper.

In practice? Not so much. All we did was turn Indiana into an abortion export hub. Illinois clinics are treating record numbers of Hoosiers. Michigan’s right behind. And online providers are shipping pills straight to mailboxes across the state.

So, yes—we shut down in-state access. But the demand didn’t go away. It shifted—across state lines and across the digital frontier.

If being “pro-life” means women now have to leave the state, pay out of pocket, or risk legal headaches just to get medical care, then congrats: we nailed it. But if the goal was to actually reduce abortions through compassion, education, or support services? We missed that one by a country mile.

The punchline? More restrictions have led to more innovation—and ironically, more access.

If you’re in the pro-life camp, that should keep you up at night. You’ve got the laws on the books, but the outcomes aren’t matching the talking points. If you’re pro-choice, don’t break out the champagne either. This patchwork system is a mess. Your rights now depend on your ZIP code, your wallet, and your Wi-Fi signal.

Abortion hasn’t disappeared. It’s just gone digital. And mobile. And across borders.

We are now in the post-post-Roe era. It’s no longer about legality—it’s about logistics. The new battleground is part FedEx, part firewall, part GoFundMe.

So yes—more restrictions.
But also, somehow… more access.

And what comes next? That depends on whether we actually want to reduce abortions—or whether we just want to pretend we did while shipping the problem off to somebody else’s state.

Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of Indy Politics.  He is also licensed to practice law in Indiana and Illinois.