Mercer County · ~91,193 residents
91,193
Residents
15
Legislative district
3
Legislators
1
Abortion facility
Trenton is where New Jersey decides things, which makes its record the state's record. It was this legislature that passed the 1804 Gradual Abolition Act freeing no living person; this legislature that in 1846 converted the remaining enslaved into "apprentices" bound to their owners for life; and this legislature that on 16 March 1865 voted down the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment abolishing slavery became law without New Jersey on 6 December that year. The state ratified it on 23 January 1866 — seven weeks after it was already binding, and only once an election had replaced the men who voted no.
That is not a distant embarrassment. It is the same building, and it is the reason this site exists in the form it does. The 1860 census still recorded an enslaved person living in Lawrence Township, in this county, fifty-six years after New Jersey began abolishing slavery. Every one of those delays was defended at the time as the realistic step — the most that could pass, the achievable advance. Gradualism is not abolition arriving slowly. It is a law that names a class of human beings whose protection can wait.
The 1860 federal census, taken on the eve of the Civil War, still recorded an enslaved person living in Lawrence Township. Fifty-six years had passed since New Jersey began abolishing slavery. Mercer County itself was created in 1838, taking Trenton from Hunterdon County and making the state capital its seat.
Source: Rider University, A Historical Timeline of Slavery in New Jersey; New Jersey State Archives
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 Trenton, or for Mercer 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
One abortion facility operates in Trenton, a Planned Parenthood health centre on East State Street — the same street as the State House:
Planned Parenthood — Trenton Health Center
437 East State Street, Trenton, NJ 08608
(833) 377-8474
Every abortion facility in New Jersey →
The Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act was passed in this city in January 2022. The legislators below represent Trenton itself, and how each of them voted is recorded here as cast.
Trenton is in District 15. New Jersey elects one senator and two assembly members from each district, so 3 people represent this city in Trenton.
Senate · District 15 · Democrat
Assembly · District 15 · Democrat
Assembly · District 15 · Democrat
Congregations we know of in Trenton that have taken a public abolitionist position — not simply a pro-life one.
We are not aware of a publicly abolitionist church in Trenton. 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.
Trenton sits in Legislative District 15, which elects one senator and two assembly members. All three are listed on this page with contact details and their recorded vote on the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act.
It is the 2022 New Jersey law, S49 and A6260, that wrote a statutory right to abortion into state law with no limit by gestational age. It is the statute any bill of abolition in New Jersey would have to repeal by name — a new prohibition sitting alongside it would simply be void.
No. No bill of abolition and no equal-protection bill has been introduced in the New Jersey Legislature. This is the standard to hold one to when it is, and the standard to hold a legislator to in the meantime.
Sign the petition, contact the three legislators who represent this city, and share this page with your church. If your congregation would consider taking a public position, reach out and we will send you what we have.
