A report estimates that Texas recorded nearly 10,000 additional births between April and December 2022 thanks to the state's abortion-restricting legislation. This is the first research of its kind conducted to understand how life-protecting regulations are affected in a quantitative way.
A Texas abortion ban that went into effect in September 2021 was associated with 9,799 additional live births in the state between April and December 2022, according to research led by Suzanne Bell, @Lizstuartdc, and @alisongemmill. https://t.co/hGH9ckKPsO
— Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (@JohnsHopkinsSPH) June 29, 2023
A "synthetic Texas" for the study
Specifically, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study estimates that an additional 9,799 births occurred because of the law signed by Governor Greg Abbott. "There has been a lot of speculation about how restrictive abortion policies will affect the number of babies being born. This research adds valuable information to that discussion. Although our study doesn't detail why these extra births occurred, our findings strongly suggest that a considerable number of pregnant individuals in Texas were unable to overcome barriers to abortion access." according to Alison Gemmill, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and one of the lead authors of the study.
To conduct their research, the researchers created a "synthetic" Texas through statistical modeling based on monthly live birth data from all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 2016 to 2022. According to the study's estimates, there would have been 287,289 births in the state from April to December 2022 if the abortion ban had not gone into effect in September 2021. However, the number of births registered during this period was 297,088, a difference of 9,799.
Pro-Life Act of 2021
The researchers emphasized that this study is confined exclusively to Texas, and that the data is not extrapolatable to other states.
Texas was among the first states to implement a rule restricting abortion following the Supreme Court ruling, reducing from 22 weeks to 5 weeks (when the fetal heartbeat becomes detectable) the period in which it can be performed.
