Roughly 10,000 additional babies were born in the state of Texas last year as a result of the “Heartbeat Bill,” a recent study suggests.
Senate Bill 8, also known as the “Heartbeat Bill,” took effect in September 2021 and effectively banned abortions “after the detection of an unborn child’s heartbeat” with limited exceptions by allowing those who performed or facilitated abortions to be civilly sued.
A study published on June 29 concluded that 9,799 babies born between April and December 2022 would not have been had the Heartbeat Bill not passed.
“There has been a lot of speculation about how restrictive abortion policies will affect the number of babies being born,” lead study author Alison Gemmill said. “This research adds valuable information to that discussion.”
“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.”
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted their analysis by creating a “synthetic” Texas using statistical modeling.
Their findings suggest that if the Heartbeat Bill were not passed, Texas would have seen 287,289 live births during the aforementioned period. The actual number of observed births observed in this time frame was 297,088.
Texas Alliance for Life Founder and Executive Director Joe Pojman told The Dallas Express, “We are thrilled to see that the protective laws that the legislature passed are working.”
“Abortions have dramatically decreased and births have increased,” he said. “Those children are welcome in Texas and Texas provides vast resources for women with unplanned pregnancies who carry their children to term, whether they … place the babies up for adoption or keep the babies.”
Pojman noted that Texas has “more than 300 pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies” and that the state provides taxpayer-funded healthcare coverage to lower-income pregnant women during pregnancy and up to two months after birth.
“Texas welcomes those children,” he said. “They will be very good citizens of our state, and I think our laws are working very well.”
Nevertheless, another lead author of the study, Suzanne Bell, maintained that the Heartbeat Bill resulted in pregnancies being carried to term that should have been terminated.
“The study’s findings highlight how abortion bans have real implications for birthing people, thousands of whom may have had no choice but to continue an unwanted or unsafe pregnancy to term,” she said. “Notably, the majority of people who seek abortions live below or close to the poverty line. So many of these birthing people and their families were likely struggling financially even before the recent birth.”
This study was published shortly after the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, returning the right to restrict abortion back to the states.
Since the decision, most abortions have been banned in 14 states, including Texas.
