Did Abortions Drop 60% in Texas the First Month of New Legislation


A Texas health agency released data that the number of abortions in the first month of the now famous Texas anti-abortion bill was 60% less than the month before. Anti-abortion groups cheered this as success. From the numbers I could find, however, it could be the number of abortions by Texas women had decreased very little. Possibly it has not decreased at all. 

It will be about a year before we have numbers on abortion performed in states where Texas women have traveled to get abortion services. These states are Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Nearby states say they have doubled their abortions. The dark place for data is the number of medically induced abortions done at homes in Texas. 

My calculations are the average monthly number of surgical abortions in Texas before the law was about 4,500. The number since is a little over 2,000. That leaves about 100 abortions not performed in Texas on each working day of the month. 

Of course, many women can afford to fly out of state for abortions. If they must drive, and the six states mentioned about can be reached by car, there are about 18 clinics that provide abortions. That would be only about five additional abortions per day per clinic. Those that went to yet other states would reduce that number.

One number anti-abortion zealots like to quote is that a majority of religious pregnancy support places in Texas have increased business. This means, they claim, more women are giving birth. I tried to find out how many of these places there are. There seems no data on that. If there are dozens of such places and the majority have seen an untick of one or two patients it there may be a very few additional births. It also tells us low-income women are the ones made worse off by the anti-abortion law, a pattern repeated in South American countries with anti-abortion laws.

From what we have seen so far, the anti-abortion law of Texas has had nearly no effect on the number of abortions and but has harassed young women.   

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