This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.

One thing about abortion providers is that they are astonishingly good at delivering care to patients, even in the most hostile climates.

That’s a truth born out in the latest Monthly Abortion Provision Study published by the Guttmacher Institute. Here are some of its highlights.

Out-of-state travel for abortion declined slightly in 2024 from 2023, according to Guttmacher’s study. The same four states—Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Kansas—led in providing abortion care for out-of-state patients. These four states remain critical regional access points for out-of-state patients as the abortion access landscape steadied almost three years after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and upended the federal right to abortion.

Guttmacher said in a press release that the latest study shows that a state’s abortion ban extends far beyond its borders.

“For instance, the substantial increase in out-of-state abortion patients in Virginia can likely be attributed to Florida’s six-week ban that went into effect in May 2024,” Kimya Forouzan, Guttmacher Institute principal state policy advisor, said in a press release. “Despite being hundreds of miles away, Virginia is the second-closest state for Florida residents to seek an abortion after six weeks’ gestation and the closest without a mandatory waiting period. This patchwork approach to abortion legality has only exacerbated inequity in abortion access across the country.”

The newly released data also revealed that despite the seemingly countless restrictions on abortion care enacted in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there were 1,038,100 clinician-provided abortions in states without total abortion bans in 2024. That’s an increase of less than 1 percent from 2023, according to the Guttmacher report. And while the overall increase in abortions may be nominal from 2023, the role of online-only clinics in providing that care rose—online-only clinics provided 14 percent of abortions in states without total bans in 2024, up from 10 percent in 2023.

Plus, according to Guttmacher, the data continue to show that clinician-provided abortions are continuing to increase compared to 2020.

“While these data cannot capture the obstacles that many abortion seekers faced or those who were unable to access care, the findings do underscore the determination and dedication of abortion patients, providers, advocates and support organizations,” Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher Institute data scientist and Monthly Abortion Provision Study project lead, said in a press release.

The TL;DR here is that—as has been shown time and time again—abortion bans do little to prevent abortions. They just increase the risk, expense, and complication of accessing that care. And given the increasingly important role online-only clinics provide in making sure patients can access that care, it’s no wonder that the conservative legal movement is coalescing around strategies to target those providers and the abortion pills they provide to patients in need.