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<\/a> subsequently banned abortion in all but rare circumstances or imposed other restrictions on access.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania was not one of those states, with abortion remaining an \u201cavailable reproductive health option\u201d 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\u2019s running for reelection this year against state treasurer and presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity, has said abortion will remain \u201csafe and legal\u201d in the state as long as he is governor.<\/p>\n Shapiro issued a statement last month after the majority of a split state Commonwealth Court panel ruled the Pennsylvania Constitution \u201cguarantees a fundamental right to reproductive autonomy\u201d and struck down a long-standing ban on the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve long opposed this unconstitutional ban, and as Governor, I did not defend it \u2014 because a woman\u2019s ability to access reproductive care should never be determined by her income,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n Garrity criticized the \u201ccallous\u201d ruling in a statement, noting the court\u2019s \u201cdecision to force our tax dollars to pay for abortions is not only misguided, it is immoral.\u201d<\/p>\n By the numbers<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Residents of the same eight-county cluster accounted for 5.8% of statewide abortions in 2023<\/a> and 5.7% in 2022<\/a>. There were more overall abortions performed in Pennsylvania both years \u2014 35,412 in 2023 and 34,838 in 2022 \u2014 compared to 2024, prior state Department of Health reports show.<\/p>\n About 34% of Pennsylvania residents who had in-state abortions in 2024 were residents of Philadelphia County, the state\u2019s most populous county, according to the most-recent report.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The vast majority of women who had abortions in 2024, about 88%, were unmarried.<\/p>\n White women accounted for about 42% of the overall abortions; Black women accounted for just over 45%.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s total. Women age 45 and older accounted for 95.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents of Northeast Pennsylvania counties accounted for less than 6% of the 32,946 abortions performed in Pennsylvania in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[201,182,803,2941,139,28,30,29,4399,231,1481,2943],"class_list":["post-182658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-monroe-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pike-county","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-wayne-county","tag-wyoming-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Abortion-rights](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777788427_364_SC_TIMES_TRIB-20220516-A-PG3-TT051622ABORTION-1-0B6A3B0F.jpg\")
Abortion-rights advocates march on Courthouse Square in Scranton in 2022. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)<\/p>\n![\"Thousands](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777788427_367_WB_VOICE-20221106-A-PG7-IMAGE_-15-91C9EB9A.jpg\")
Thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Harrisburg marched toward the Capitol in 2022 during the second annual Pennsylvania March for Life. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)<\/p>\n