It might come as a surprise to many Wisconsinites to learn that more Wisconsin women are getting abortions today than were accessing abortion in the state four years ago, right before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In large part, that’s because of the rise of telehealth abortion, with patients receiving prescription medication by mail and using it in the privacy of their own homes under remote supervision from a doctor. (Wisconsin law prohibits telehealth abortion, but shield laws in several less restrictive states protect providers there, so women here can access their care.) 

A chart created by University of Wisconsin researchers in the UW Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE) shows that abortion services at bricks-and-mortar clinics, which dropped to zero in Wisconsin immediately after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, have not quite reached pre-Dobbs levels. But the steady increase in telehealth abortion, which now accounts for about one-third of all abortions in the state, pushes the total number of abortions slightly above a May 2022 pre-Dobbs spike.

Everyone remembers the bomb that dropped on June 24, 2022 when the Dobbs decision came down. All abortion care ceased in Wisconsin for more than a year, as healthcare providers who worried they could be charged with a felony under an antiquated 1849 law stopped providing abortion services. One woman was refused care and left to bleed for 10 days while suffering an untreated, incomplete miscarriage. 

Voter backlash to that sudden, forced return to the gynecological Dark Ages helped propel the landslide election of a female, pro-choice majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Abortion services resumed in 2023 when a Dane County judge ruled that the 1849 law did not ban abortions. Then, finally, last summer the Court invalidated the 1849 law altogether. 

Abortion is not the central issue in the 2026 elections that it was in 2022. But in our tippy, polarized state, access to abortion could go either way. 

“There’s good news and bad news,” says Jenny Higgins, a professor in the UW’s OB-GYN department and the director of CORE. The good news is the rise in telemedicine abortion and the overall increase in abortion access in Wisconsin.

For a lot of women, telemedicine is considerably more appealing than the expense and stress of traveling long distances, running a gauntlet of protesters and paying hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket for in-person care that cannot be covered, under Wisconsin law, by Medicaid, public employee health insurance or Affordable Care Act plans. Telemed abortion is also cheap — as little as $5 on some sliding scale plans, Higgins says.

And there’s more good news: political momentum to defend abortion rights suggests that the many restrictions on abortion in Wisconsin could soon be legislated away — if voters stay activated.

“The bad news,” Higgins says, “is that abortion remains heavily, heavily restricted here, including with a telehealth ban, and so we don’t know how much longer shield laws will hold.”

A current case before the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to ban mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in combination for medication abortion. In addition to pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to rescind its longtime verdict that the drug is safe, anti-abortion groups and Republican state attorneys general are now trying to get the Environmental Protection Agency to ban mifepristone on the disingenuous grounds that it causes water pollution.

“We also don’t know the extent to which individuals will be criminalized for these things,” Higgins adds. There could be lawsuits against women in Wisconsin, as there have been in other states, “where people are bringing suits against folks who have ordered pills.”

All in all, “it’s an unsteady situation,” says Higgins.

It’s not clear how much abortion rights will motivate voters in the potentially life-changing elections this fall. 

“Abortion has been an unusually important issue in the decisions of voters in Wisconsin,” says Michael Wagner, a professor in the school of journalism and mass communications at the UW and the director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, “especially in election cycles where voters can’t rely solely upon their partisanship to cast a ballot.” 

In the last three state Supreme Court races, Wagner notes, “abortion has been a huge issue in the advertising of the candidates, and since it has, the candidate that has won the election has been a pro-choice candidate, without fail, since Dobbs was before the court.”

In general, Wagner says, “the public has been quite supportive in Wisconsin of abortion rights,” including medication abortion. 

Four in 10 Republicans support legal abortion, along with 80% of Democrats. So Republicans are caught between their highly motivated anti-abortion base and a large group of voters who don’t favor outlawing abortion. 

Does that mean the Trump administration might hold off on banning medication abortion at the FDA or the EPA level, nodding to voter sentiment?

Don’t hold your breath.

“Almost every policy proposal the president has pursued in the second term is underwater in public opinion, and he hasn’t stopped pursuing most of them,” says Wagner.

Plus, Republican voters who don’t agree with the candidates on abortion aren’t necessarily abandoning them. “There hasn’t been a strong, stark trend that has lasted across four or five election cycles that leads me to think Republicans are, you know, committing malpractice politically if they don’t soften their view on abortion,” Wagner says. “I don’t think there’s evidence for that kind of conclusion.”

Maybe the silver lining of the Trump/Dobbs era is that the federal government is no longer the major player when it comes to protecting abortion rights.

“The governor’s race, the control of the state Legislature, state Supreme Court races, these are now the races that will determine whether abortion is legal in Wisconsin,” says Wagner.

“I think it’s going to be a big issue. It’s one of the things where Democrats can say, especially in the state, ‘Put us in charge and we can codify some things.’ You know, that’s something that they really can do in this particular election that they could not have done in prior elections, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a bigger issue, but I think it depends upon who the nominee ends up being for the Democrats for governor, especially.”

Higgins is optimistic. 

“While we’re seeing increases in abortion numbers, abortion is still highly, highly constrained in our state, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” she says. It was only after the 2010 election, when Republicans won control of the entire state government and cemented their power by passing gerrymandered voting maps, that Wisconsin began heavily restricting abortion access. 

“We have the ability to change that,” Higgins says. “Wisconsin was once considered as recently as 2009 a supportive place for abortion access. We have the ability to get back there.”