WASHINGTON EXAMINER – The number of abortions Texas residents received dropped by 97% the month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Only 68 abortions were performed for Texans in the month of July, according to preliminary data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, down from the 2,596 procedures performed in June, the month that the Supreme Court found in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that there is no constitutional right to abortion.
The new data reveal that abortions in the state, after being greatly reduced by the 2021 law that banned most abortions after a fetal heartbeat was detected (which is generally around six weeks of pregnancy), effectively ceased in June as providers held back out of uncertainty over the law.
Abortion providers stopped operations almost completely as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said that a pre-Roe abortion ban, dating back to 1925, was again enforceable in the wake of Dobbs. The 1925 ban prohibited most abortions from the moment of fertilization. Under the law, providers also faced a five-year maximum prison sentence.
“I think that part of that was the confusion afterward, but we’re also seeing that the law in Texas took effect, and when it did, Texas was seeing a significant drop off in the number of abortions that were being performed,” said Laura Echevarria, communications director and press secretary for the National Right to Life Committee, which is opposed to abortion.
The decision in Dobbs put into motion two state laws that further restricted abortions and criminalized physicians providing them.
Abortion rights proponents filed a lawsuit in late June opposing the 1925 abortion ban, which resulted in some providers resuming abortions up until six weeks of pregnancy, but by early July, the state Supreme Court ruled that the 1925 ban was constitutional … READ MORE.
