New research indicates tightened restrictions on abortion after the legal demise of Roe v. Wade led to an estimated 32,000 new babies being born in conservative states, such as Florida, just during the first half of 2023.
And a large share of those births produced more black and brown Americans. Still, the left-wing group that conducted the research did not see cause for celebration.
Instead, the Institute for Labor Economics lamented those extra births as a detriment to the lives of the “pregnant people” who experienced them and others who may not easily end a pregnancy.
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In its report, the ILE said the Supreme Court’s decision to end Roe in June 2022 “sparked the most profound transformation of the landscape of abortion access in 50 years.”
The ILE is based in Germany, but has affiliates across the globe.
This report, which claimed to offer the “first estimates of the effects of this [court] decision on fertility,” by comparing bans in red states to open-ended access in blue states, was compiled by researchers at Georgia Tech and Middlebury College in Vermont.
The big picture, the report notes, was that “states with abortion bans experienced an average increase in births of 2.3 percent relative to states where abortion was not restricted.”
That equated to an estimated 32,000 new births, again predominantly in red states, that likely would not have occurred without the quashing of Roe.
Researchers found that non-whites produced a greater share of this new population growth.
“We observe that fertility rates increased by 3, 3.8, and 4.7 percent for non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic women, respectively,” the report states. This was consistent with previous studies that found abortion restrictions tend to save more non-white lives, the authors noted.
The authors also found evidence that abortion restrictions may reverse the rising average age when women are giving birth. The abortion bans helped increase births among women ages 20-24 by 3.3%.
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But, as they see it, the end of the “constitutional protection for abortion rights” as existed under Roe is a major problem.
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the “most profound transformation” of abortion policy in a half-century because, once red-state restrictions kicked in, the average one-way trip to get an abortion increased from 43 miles to 330 miles.
In a way, they argue, “abortion seekers … are trapped.”
“If the past foretells our present, the Dobbs decision will result in increases in unintended births and exacerbate economic inequality,” the report argues.
Legalized abortion under Roe, they wrote, “reduced births, particularly among young women, and forestalled ‘shotgun marriages’ that otherwise would have resulted from unintended pregnancies.”
Thus, women’s new “ability to control fertility … improved women’s health and increased women’s educational attainment, labor force participation, occupation prestige, and earnings.”
Now, they add, that is in jeopardy as “pregnant people” must deal with these newfound consequences.
They note that roughly 20% of all pregnancies ended in abortion as of 2020, and 75% of these “patients” were low-income, while 55% cited a “disruptive life event” such as falling behind on rent payments or losing a job.
“Recent evidence suggests that diminished abortion access poses a risk to the health and financial stability of this vulnerable population,” the ILE authors maintain.
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They fail to mention the consequences of easy abortion access for the citizens inside the womb.
Nonetheless, they still see hope in that in post-Dobbs America, abortion remains legal in most circumstances in 30 states and the District of Columbia, and that women are willing to travel to states where it is legal to obtain one.
“Moreover, even for those pregnant people who are unable to find a way to manage the logistics and costs of a lengthy trip to receive healthcare services, organizations such as Aid Access will supply medication abortion via mail to ban states for pregnant people to self-manage their abortions safely and effectively,” the report noted.
In their conclusion, the authors add, “While these trends suggest that interstate travel and self-management of abortion [through mail-order medications] may blunt the ultimate impacts of abortion bans on fertility, the question of the ultimate effect of bans on births has been unresolved.”
Their “back-of-the-envelope calculation” revealed that 20% to 25% of women seeking abortions did not receive them because of new restrictions.
On one hand, that led to more new babies in the world.
Yet, the report concludes, “Future changes to the landscape of bans, medication abortion access, and unintended pregnancy rates could further mediate the effects of bans.”
“If future research using finalized data and additional policy variation reveals continued substantial effects on births, then we expect long-lasting and profound effects on the lives of affected pregnant people and their families, including effects on educational investment, employment, earnings, and financial security.”
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