Ocean County · ~141,985 residents
141,985
Residents
30
Legislative district
3
Legislators
0
Abortion facilities
Lakewood is the fourth largest municipality in New Jersey and one of the fastest growing: the Census Bureau put it at 135,123 in 2020 and 141,985 in 2024, a rise of about 5% in four years. It is a township where religious conviction visibly orders public life, which is worth saying plainly on a page like this — the case against abortion made here is a religious case, made in public, and it does not pretend otherwise.
Ocean County did not exist for most of the period that matters to this argument. It was set off from Monmouth County in February 1850, ten years before the last federal census to count enslaved people in New Jersey. From 1737 until 1800 the densest slaveholding in the state was in Bergen, Monmouth and Somerset — and Lakewood was in Monmouth through all of it. New Jersey was the last northern state to free its slaves, and it did so by degrees: nobody living was freed in 1804, the remaining enslaved were renamed "apprentices" in 1846, eighteen were still held in 1860, and the legislature voted down the Thirteenth Amendment in March 1865.
Ocean County was set off from Monmouth County on 15 February 1850 — ten years before the last federal census to count enslaved people in New Jersey. From 1737 until 1800 the densest slaveholding in the state was in Bergen, Monmouth and Somerset. Lakewood, Toms River, Brick, Jackson and Manchester all sat in Monmouth through that period.
Source: New Jersey State Archives, county formation table; New Jersey Slavery Records project
Abortion reporting to the CDC is voluntary, and New Jersey is one of four jurisdictions that declines. Its own Department of Health publishes no count of induced terminations, by county or statewide. The state that wrote abortion access into its statutes does not record how often it happens.
There is no figure for Lakewood, or for Ocean County, because there is no figure for anywhere in New Jersey. The best available independent estimate is 61,200 abortions provided by clinicians statewide in 2025.
Sources: CDC, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2022 (MMWR Surveillance Summaries) · Guttmacher Institute, Monthly Abortion Provision Study
No abortion facility in our directory operates inside Lakewood Township. That is a fact about a list, not a guarantee — if you know of one here, tell us and we will verify it and add it.
No abortion facility in our directory is located inside Lakewood Township.
Every abortion facility in New Jersey →
Lakewood sits in Legislative District 30. Its senator and two assembly members are below, with their recorded votes on the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act.
Lakewood Township is in District 30. New Jersey elects one senator and two assembly members from each district, so 3 people represent this municipality in Trenton.
“No recorded vote” means the member was not serving when the bill was voted on in January 10, 2022. It is not an abstention, and we do not present it as one.
Senate · District 30 · Republican
Assembly · District 30 · Democrat
Assembly · District 30 · Republican
Congregations we know of in Lakewood Township that have taken a public abolitionist position — not simply a pro-life one.
We are not aware of a publicly abolitionist church in Lakewood Township. We read every New Jersey congregation in the directory we work from — 106 of them — and found one in the whole state, in Glassboro. Abolitionists Rising, the movement's own national organisation, lists the same single church on its New Jersey page and no others. That is not a gap in the research. It is the situation.
If your church has taken a public position on abolition — from the pulpit, in a resolution, or in its own published words — tell us and we will verify it and list it here.
Lakewood is in Legislative District 30, which elects one senator and two assembly members. All three are listed on this page with contact details and their recorded FRCA vote.
No. Neither a bill of abolition nor an equal-protection bill has been introduced in the New Jersey Legislature.
The state does not report it, and publishes no count at any geography. Guttmacher estimates about 61,200 abortions provided by clinicians in New Jersey in 2025.
