Residents of Northeast Pennsylvania counties accounted for less than 6% of the 32,946 abortions performed in Pennsylvania in 2024, the most recently available state Department of Health data shows.
The state’s annual abortion report for 2024, published in December 2025, breaks down abortion statistics by county of residence, age, weeks of gestation and other metrics, providing a look at abortion by the numbers in Pennsylvania about two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the lesser-known Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The controversial ruling that galvanized Democratic voters during the 2022 congressional midterm elections eliminated the federal constitutional right to an abortion that Roe established in 1973. It returned the authority to regulate abortion to the individual states, a number of which subsequently banned abortion in all but rare circumstances or imposed other restrictions on access.
Abortion-rights advocates march on Courthouse Square in Scranton in 2022. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
Pennsylvania was not one of those states, with abortion remaining an “available reproductive health option” here through the 23rd week of pregnancy and in certain cases thereafter when the health of a pregnant person is at risk, per the state Department of Health. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s running for reelection this year against state treasurer and presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity, has said abortion will remain “safe and legal” in the state as long as he is governor.
Shapiro issued a statement last month after the majority of a split state Commonwealth Court panel ruled the Pennsylvania Constitution “guarantees a fundamental right to reproductive autonomy” and struck down a long-standing ban on the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortions.
“I’ve long opposed this unconstitutional ban, and as Governor, I did not defend it — because a woman’s ability to access reproductive care should never be determined by her income,” Shapiro said.
Garrity criticized the “callous” ruling in a statement, noting the court’s “decision to force our tax dollars to pay for abortions is not only misguided, it is immoral.”
By the numbers
The recent ruling, debate over it and the broader abortion debate notwithstanding, the 2024 statistics show residents of a local eight-county region accounted for 1,949, or about 5.9%, of the 32,946 abortions performed statewide that year. Figures by county of residence include Lackawanna, 434; Luzerne, 825; Monroe, 385; Pike, 41; Schuylkill, 190; Susquehanna, 15; Wayne, 39; and Wyoming, 20, per the state data.
Residents of the same eight-county cluster accounted for 5.8% of statewide abortions in 2023 and 5.7% in 2022. There were more overall abortions performed in Pennsylvania both years — 35,412 in 2023 and 34,838 in 2022 — compared to 2024, prior state Department of Health reports show.
Thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Harrisburg marched toward the Capitol in 2022 during the second annual Pennsylvania March for Life. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
About 34% of Pennsylvania residents who had in-state abortions in 2024 were residents of Philadelphia County, the state’s most populous county, according to the most-recent report.
It also provides abortion figures by county of procedure, with Luzerne County remaining the only local county where abortions were performed in 2024, accounting for 808 of the state’s 32,946. Of that total, about 93% of abortions statewide were performed in 10 counties: Allegheny, Berks, Bucks, Dauphin, Delaware, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, Philadelphia and York.
Among other statistics, almost 56% of the 32,946 total abortions were medical, where medication is used to terminate a pregnancy, as opposed to surgical. Almost 93% of the overall abortions were performed in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, and none were performed after 24 weeks, the report shows.
The vast majority of women who had abortions in 2024, about 88%, were unmarried.
White women accounted for about 42% of the overall abortions; Black women accounted for just over 45%.
Girls age 12 and under accounted for four abortions, while girls age 15 and under collectively accounted for 228, less than 1% of the state’s total. Women age 45 and older accounted for 95.
Of the 83 girls under the age of 15 who ended pregnancies via abortions in Pennsylvania in 2024, four were residents of Luzerne County, one was a resident of Monroe County and one was a resident of Schuylkill County, per the data.