Texas abortion law may have led to nearly 10,000 more US births in last nine months of 2022
Strict abortion laws in Texas may have led to nearly 10,000 additional births in the last nine months of 2022, following the ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
More than a year after Roe v Wade verdict and the tightening of abortion laws the US has recorded thousands of additional births. According to a recently study, strict abortion laws in Texas may have led to nearly 10,000 more births in the last nine months of 2022. The Texas Senate Bill – effective some 10 months before the Supreme Court overturned the earlier verdict – has banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy with doctors being permitted to carry out the procedure only if the mother’s life is in danger.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysed birth records from Texas and other states for several years to establish a pattern. Contrasting the projected birth trends from previous years against the latest data they found that there were about 297,000 total births between April and December 2022. This is about 3% more than the 287,000 births expected without the law.
Republican politicians have increasingly pushed a hardline anti-abortion stance in the United States with the conservative-dominated Supreme Court finally striking down a 1973 ruling that had backed a woman’s right to make such a decision. The Supreme Court ruling had left the decision to set their own abortion policies up to individual states – with 18 of them putting curbs in place.
“In the first month after SB8 went into effect, the total number of facility-based abortions provided to pregnant Texas residents in Texas or 1 of the 6 adjacent states decreased by 38% (2171 fewer abortions).1 Many have speculated that as abortion becomes more difficult to access, people will be forced to carry pregnancies to term, thereby increasing births,” read an excerpt from the paper’s asbstract.
Meanwhile, a court case that began in Texas has also sought to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of a widely used abortion pill drug – mifepristone. Lower courts had said that women seeking the drug should face more restrictions on getting it while the case continues. The Supreme Court however disagreed, asserting that nothing would change for the moment.
