From Trust to Transformation

In early 2022, the Guttmacher Institute received the largest gift from an individual donor in the organization’s history: $15 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. As many following Scott’s philanthropy know, her gifts come without restriction, allowing recipient organizations to use the dollars where they are most needed. Powered by the infusion of Scott’s resources and her goal of accelerating progress, Guttmacher quickly assembled a cross-divisional task force to brainstorm innovative programmatic solutions to the sector’s most entrenched challenges. 

One of those challenges was providing a clear, timely record of the number of abortions taking place in the United States. Guttmacher has been tracking abortion counts and rates for 50 years, ever since Roe v. Wade. These estimates were often published with a two- to three-year lag due to a time-intensive data collection process from every abortion provider in the country.

That timeline no longer worked post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “State policies were changing month to month or sometimes even week to week, and we needed to be able to capture the impact of those changes,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher’s Data Scientist, who has been a part of the research team for 15 years. “We needed evidence that was actionable now.”

Before Scott’s gift, devising a way to generate such evidence would have been a daunting task. “We’re typically funded to do specific research projects, so we’re moving from one deadline to another, and that pace doesn’t let up,” said Maddow-Zimet. “Rather than focusing on a specific deliverable, I was able to devote almost 100% of my time to thinking about how to do the work differently and experiment with new ideas. That was a true gift.”

The result of that time spent thinking? Guttmacher’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study, which provides a monthly count of the number of clinician-provided abortions taking place in the United States (among other critical data points). Never has this data been so accessible, allowing researchers, policymakers, abortion providers and the public to respond to the realities of the landscape in real time. The study is also designed to minimize the enormous pressure on abortion providers, who field media and research requests while treating an influx of patients traveling from states with abortion bans.

Isaac Maddow-Zimet delivers testimony in front of the US Senate Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights on how abortion bans and restrictions force pregnant patients to travel for abortion care. (image from C-Span recording)

The study now lives on an interactive online dashboard designed to make the data widely available. “In most research, there’s a data collection period, an analysis period, and then, often much later, publication of results. On this project, we never stop collecting data, and we make our estimates available as soon as we possibly can,” said Maddow-Zimet.

Building on this project’s success, Guttmacher is leveraging its experience collecting data in countries with severe restrictions to also estimate counts of self-managed abortions in the United States. The goal is to provide a more complete picture of the experience of US abortion seekers. Again, funds from the Scott gift are powering this innovative research.

Maddow-Zimet credits Scott’s funding with making these innovations in Guttmacher’s research possible. “The unique aspect of this project really was having the time to think and to experiment, without donor restrictions and  without knowing if we would be successful. If you were to give any of the  research scientists at Guttmacher that freedom, they would come up with something incredible.”  

You can learn more about Guttmacher’s impact in our 2024 Impact Report.