Almost 10,000 additional babies were born in Texas in a nine-month period after the state banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went, a new study has shown.
The study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Thursday, is the first analysis of live birth rates since a controversial law—Senate Bill 8—went into effect in September 2021.
The law empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers and the who assist patents in seeking an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected. But after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June last year, Texas has enacted some of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws, banning all abortions unless a mother's life is at risk.
To analyze the impact of Senate Bill 8, researchers created a statistical model of what Texas would have looked like without the law.
The researchers said they used statistical modelling based on monthly live birth data from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from 2016 through 2022 to create that "synthetic" Texas. They calculated that there would have been 287,289 live births in Texas from April to December 2022 had the abortion law not gone into effect in September 2021.
The number of observed births in actual Texas during this period was 297,088—indicating that an additional 9,799 babies were born during that period.
The authors of the study stopped short of attributing the estimated increase in births solely to the abortion law.
"There has been a lot of speculation about how restrictive abortion policies will affect the number of babies being born," said Alison Gemmill, one of the study's lead authors and an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health.
"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." Newsweek has contacted the study's authors for further comment.
Abortion opponents were cheered by findings that suggest more pregnancies were carried to term that may not have been without Senate Bill 8.
"Every baby saved from elective abortion should be celebrated," John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion advocacy group, told The Texas Tribune.
"This new study highlights the significant success of our movement in the last two years, while we look forward to helping the mothers and families of our state care for their children."
Another study published in JAMA last year estimated that the number of abortions provided to pregnant Texas residents in facilities in Texas or one of six adjacent states decreased by 38 percent in the month after the law went into effect.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on abortion rights, race, education, ... Read more
