Abortion in New York is legal via state statute and Article I, Section 11 of the state constitution. Abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy require the approval of a licensed physician. The Reproductive Health Act, passed in 2019 in New York, further allows abortions past the 24th week of pregnancy if a pregnant woman's life or physical or mental health is at risk, or if the fetus is not viable. However, since these exceptions are not defined by the law, and the law carries no criminal penalties for the pregnant individual, abortion is effectively legal throughout pregnancy.

The number of abortion clinics in New York (for which more than half of all patient visits are for abortion) declined from 302 in 1982 to 95 in 2014, but increased to 113 in 2017, according to Guttmacher Institute. The abortion rate decreased from an estimated 39 abortions per 1000 women aged 15–44 in 1992 to 22 per 1000 in 2016, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Madame Restell opened a business that performed abortions in the 1830s in New York City. Her business remained open for around 35 years, and openly advertised its services in newspapers. She had branches in several other cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, and employed traveling agents working for the company that sold her "Female Monthly Pills". New York state saw many women dying during the 1860s and 1870s due to using unskilled abortion providers. Some of these deaths were highly publicized, which turned the public's attitude against abortions. In 1918, Margaret Sanger was charged under the New York law against disseminating contraceptive information. On appeal, her conviction was reversed because contraceptive devices could legally be promoted to cure and prevent disease.

A group of science, health, and medical experts met in 1955 in New York; their purpose was to discuss abortion in the United States. Their belief was that between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal abortions took place annually. Planned Parenthood Federation of America had a conference at Arden House in New York in 1955. The conference's purpose was to review the knowledge framework in the United States as it related to abortion. One of the accomplishments of the conference was that it published the "first objective and quantitative estimates of illegal abortions". The conference also provided participants with a first-hand perspective on the state of abortion in the country, from a presentation by a physician who had performed over 5,000 abortions.

In 1955, Sloane Hospital in New York created a hospital review board to approve all abortion requests. Consequently, the number of abortions performed at the hospital in the next five-year period for therapeutic reasons was half what it was prior to 1955. According to Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, hospital review committees taught doctors to only refer cases they thought would be approved, saying: "Many physicians are discouraged by telephone conversations or corridor consultation with a single Committee member."

At Harlem Hospital, before the legalization of abortion in New York in 1970, there was a positive correlation between neonatal and perinatal mortality and the number of clandestine and non-medical community abortions. In the 1940s and 1950s, abortions would be given to some women on mental health waivers at Mount Sinai if they indicated they had attempted to commit suicide as a result of the pregnancy. At one New York City hospital, in the pre-Roe v. Wade period, a teenage girl asked for an abortion, citing suicide attempts as the reason; the hospital committee initially turned her down and hospitalized her, and the girl continued to try to kill herself. The waiver was finally granted, in order to stop the disruption the girl caused at the hospital.

Because of the nature of their abortion laws, New York City and the District of Columbia became destination centers for women in 1971 who were seeking legal abortions.

Abortion was legalized up to the 24th week of pregnancy in New York in 1970, three years before it was legalized for the entire United States with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Roe v. Wade was later overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.