(LifeSiteNews) – Abortion bans allowed to take effect after Roe v. Wade’s 2022 reversal increased anticipated birth rates by 2.8 percent in the affected states, according to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
“We use difference-in-differences research designs to estimate the effects of abortion bans on births at the county level, leveraging data on changes in driving distance and appointment availability at the nearest facility where abortion remains legal,” explains the paper. “We find that bans alone increase births, but their total impact depends on geographic barriers to access.”
That includes a one-percent increase even in places where distance to facilities with available appointments remained unchanged, which the authors attribute to “legal uncertainty, misinformation, or logistical hurdles.”
But most significant was that in “counties where the nearest abortion facility was 50 miles away pre-Dobbs, a total ban increases births by 2.8% when distance rises to 300 miles.” Further, this effect has not diminished even in the time since pro-abortion activists have “expanded logistical, financial, and telehealth abortion support” to compensate, according to the authors.
“By the end of 2022, 13 states—Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—were enforcing near-total bans on abortions with very limited exceptions,” the study explains. “In addition, 13 states that were not enforcing total abortion bans had restrictive abortion policies and were categorized as ‘hostile’ by organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute (2025) and Center for Reproductive Rights (2025).”
While tracking abortion numbers can be unreliable due to things like cross-state telehealth abortions causing undercounting, “Births data do not suffer any such measurement challenges,” the authors continue. “Using natality files from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS, 2024) […] we obtain highly accurate counts of state resident births. Despite concerns about abortion undercounting, birth data confirm that ban states saw real fertility effects.”
“It really tracks, both that women who are poorer and younger and have less education are more likely to have an unintended pregnancy, and more likely to be unable to overcome the barriers to abortion,” pro-abortion Ohio State epidemiology professor Dr. Alison Norris told the New York Times.
“We obviously are seeing the evidence that the bans are actually preventing abortions,” said Texas Right to Life president John Seago, who added that America still needs a national abortion ban and states like Texas must take action to prevent residents from obtaining out-of-state abortions. In the meantime, however, he celebrated that current restrictions are “actually saving lives.”
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
But while not fully canceling out pro-life laws according to the NBER study plus work by pro-life scholars such as Dr. Michael New, the pro-abortion strategy has helped the abortion industry persist. In November 2023, Operation Rescue noted that 79 percent of the newly opened or reopened abortion facilities only distribute abortion drugs, with just the remaining 21 percent committing surgical abortions. Of the latter, 99 percent also prescribed abortion pills. Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report last year revealed that it managed to commit a record 392,715 abortions in 2023 as well as 123,855 telehealth appointments despite the new hurdles.
Whatever the full extent of those efforts has been, they underscore that the battle over abortion is far from over at any level of government, and that federal policy continues to have a significant effect regardless of how badly many politicians wish to relegate the issue to the state level.
