Abortion bans in the United States following the Dobbs decision have led to an estimated 32,000 more births in states with restrictions during the first half of 2023.
This increase in fertility rates reflects the impact of abortion limitations, particularly in states with longer travel times to the nearest abortion providers.
The rise in births suggests unmet needs for abortion care, especially among Hispanic and younger women.
Experts pointed out potential consequences of unintended births, including infant mortality and the impact on families’ long-term financial security.
“It’s an assault on reproductive autonomy,” said assistant professor Alison Gemmill.
“We don’t always detect signals in these population aggregates because there’s a lot of variation when you group everybody together. The fact that there is a signal at the population level means that something’s really going on. It’s pretty strong evidence.”
“Restricted access to abortion services causes this domino effect,” said Rachel Hardeman, a professor of health and racial equity at the University of Minnesota.
“[The Dobbs decision] has had a profound impact on birthing people’s ability to decide what their family looks like and how they navigate that,” she added.
“All of the material resources necessary for a family to not just barely survive, but to thrive in our society are going to be impacted by their ability to access health care, broadly speaking, and abortion care, specifically.”
“Infant mortality is one of these more concrete consequences that we can measure right now, and we are seeing impacts there,” Gemmill said.
“I think about these women that had to carry these gestations and give birth to them, knowing that they were likely going to die shortly after birth and the trauma related to that,” she added.
“We’re just going to be learning more and more about the consequences.”
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