Today, the Guttmacher Institute released a fact sheet with new data from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study on the proportion of abortions in 2025 provided by Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs). These first-of-their-kind estimates provide critical insights into how people are currently accessing abortion care across the United States.
APCs, which include physician associates, advanced practice registered nurses, nurse practitioners, certified midwives and certified nurse midwives, play a critical role in health care settings across the United States.
Key Findings
In 2025:
- APCs provided more than 360,000 abortions in the United States. These include procedural abortions, as well as medication abortions provided both in-person or via telehealth.
- Abortions provided by APCs represented almost a third of clinician-provided abortions nationwide.
- In the 26 states and jurisdictions where APC abortion provision was permitted under state law, APCs accounted for an estimated 43% of all clinician-provided abortions.
"These data help to illustrate the critical role that APCs play in providing abortions across the country, including in many underserved communities," says Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher data scientist and study lead. "However, these numbers do not include the many other ways—such as counseling and follow-up care—in which these providers support abortion patients, even in states where they are not permitted to provide direct abortion services.”
Laws and Policies
Authorization for advanced practice clinicians to provide abortion care is determined by a complex web of state laws, policies and other practical considerations. In addition to professional scope of practice policies and regulatory boards that impact whether or not APCs can directly provide abortion services, many states have laws specifically addressing the provision of abortion care by APCs:
- APCs can legally provide abortion care in 25 states and Washington, DC.
- Some of these states limit the type of abortion care that APCs can provide, for example by only allowing them to provide medication abortion or up to certain gestational limits.
- Post-Dobbs, several states, including Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio, have struck down physician-only laws to allow APCs to provide abortions.
- 25 states ban APCs from providing abortions.
Concurrent with the release of these new data, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) has released the third edition of the APC Abortion Provider Toolkit. This latest edition is an updated, expanded and dynamic version of a publication that has been a vital resource for clinicians, researchers, advocates and educators regarding APC provision of abortion care for the past two decades.
“Guttmacher’s new data quantify the substantial capacity APCs add to an abortion landscape that faces ever-growing pressure to meet patient demand in a post-Dobbs world,” says Julie Jenkins, Clinicians in Abortion Care Program Strategist at the National Abortion Federation. “Bans on APC provision are designed to tie the hands of skillfully trained APCs and narrow the abortion provider pool. The numbers don’t lie. APCs play a critical role in expanding abortion access, and our policy and advocacy must reflect this reality.”
The complete dataset is available on the Monthly Abortion Provision Dashboard. The fact sheet is available here.
About the Study
The Monthly Abortion Provision Study estimates the number of clinician-provided abortions that take place every month in each US state and nationally. The study collects data on procedural and medication abortions provided at brick-and-mortar health facilities (such as clinics or doctor’s offices), as well as medication abortions provided via telehealth. Study respondents are asked to exclude advance provision of medication abortion pills from the data they provide; estimates also exclude the limited number of abortions provided under exceptions to total bans, and abortions provided by non-clinicians (including those provided through community health networks, online pharmacies or other means). For more details, see Methodology Appendix.
About the Guttmacher Institute
The Guttmacher Institute is a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide. The Institute has a long history of tracking abortion incidence in the United States and globally. Every three years since 1974, the Guttmacher Institute has conducted the Abortion Provider Census of all known facilities providing abortion in the United States to collect information about service provision, including total number of abortions.