Texas’ birthrate increased by 2% after state lawmakers banned most abortions in 2021, new research shows. But scholars say women could be finding ways around the law.
A recent study from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender and Society analyzed the impact of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which restricted most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021.
As births started climbing in April 2022, the study found Texas’ fertility rate rose from 60.68 to 61.92 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 between 2021 and 2022 — the first annual increase since 2014. Teen fertility also surged for the first time in 15 years, even as the national rate fell.
While researchers said the increase “might be explained in part by factors unrelated to the ban,” they pointed to a July 2023 analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers that associated Texas’ law with 9,799 additional births between April and December 2022.
Numbers are not yet available to estimate the effects of a more sweeping Texas abortion ban that took effect in August 2022, triggered by the U.S. Supreme Court returning jurisdiction over the procedure to state governments two months earlier.
Several leading abortion scholars interviewed by The Washington Times said the study confirms that Texas’ law has led to more mothers carrying their babies to term.
However, they cautioned that an unknown number of women have either left Texas to end their pregnancies in other states or ordered abortion pills online, limiting the baby boom.
“As these numbers show, state restrictions on abortion do save some unborn lives in the particular state where they’re enacted, although an increase in childbirths of only 2% in Texas is still fairly low,” said Daniel K. Williams, a historian and researcher at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, a private Christian school.
According to the study, an 8% increase in births among Hispanic women aged 25-44 drove the fertility increase.
Hispanic women are more likely than others to lack the resources to work around the Texas law, said Tricia Bruce, a sociologist affiliated with the University of Notre Dame.
“Women of color are disproportionately represented among those who get abortions,” Ms. Bruce said. “With the overlap of race and class, the exorbitant cost of traveling to another state for an abortion … might make Hispanic women less able to access abortion and thereby increase fertility.”
Michael New, a professor of social research at the Catholic University of America and scholar at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said the fertility increases were highest in counties far from out-of-state abortion clinics.
“These findings are significant because they show pro-life laws are saving lives and having a positive impact,” Mr. New said.
In November 2022, he published an analysis of Texas birth data for the Lozier Institute that found 157,856 babies were born in Texas between March and July 2022, exceeding the previous three-year average by more than 5,000.
Most abortion clinics in Texas closed after the start of the 2021 law, which allows private citizens to sue providers who perform surgical abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable.
According to the conservative Christian advocacy group Texas Values, the number of reported abortions in Texas dropped from 52,495 in 2021 and 21,930 in 2022 to 49 last year.
Clinical abortions now rarely occur in Texas outside of hospital emergencies.
“It’s hard to know what’s happening with chemical abortion pills and we’re going to keep looking into that,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values. “But it’s clear that more babies are being born in Texas and the law is doing what it was designed to do.”
Nevertheless, “a handful” of lawsuits have been filed citing the Texas Heartbeat Act and none has reached judgment, said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.
“The law had a chilling effect on abortion providers and the numbers show it has been successful,” Mr. Blackman said. “Now it’s costing women to leave the state, which discourages abortions further.”
Mary Ziegler, a leading historian of the legal abortion debate and law professor at the University of California, Davis, said it remains unknown how many Texans have traveled to other states for abortions or ordered pills online.
“The Texas law is certainly making it harder for people to get abortions, but we don’t have enough data yet to tell if it’s stopping them,” Ms. Ziegler said. “[The Supreme Court decision] isn’t even two years old, so anyone trying to draw a definitive conclusion at this point is going to look silly.”
According to pro-life activists, the legal picture remains murky and complicated.
In December, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily halted a lower court ruling that would have allowed a woman to abort a fetus diagnosed with a non-fatal genetic abnormality.
Rather than await the court’s judgment, media reports indicate that the woman traveled to another state for the procedure and that President Biden, who opposes abortion restrictions, has invited her to attend his upcoming State of the Union address on March 7.
Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas, said lawsuits based on the Texas Heartbeat Act have largely been unnecessary because “as far as we know, the laws are being complied with.”
“The mere existence of these laws acts as a deterrent and is saving lives across the Lone Star State,” Mr. Dickson said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.