Abortions in Texas dropped by 97% in the month after the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to preliminary data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
In July, just 68 abortions were performed in Texas, down from 2,596 in June. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June when it ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that there is no constitutional basis for the right to abortion.
Abortions in Texas, which were already significantly decreased by the state's 2021 fetal heartbeat law, effectively stopped in June amid uncertainty about the law.
After Dobbs, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said a 1925 pre-Roe ban on abortion was in effect again and enforceable. The nearly century-old law bans most abortions from the moment of conception and providers face 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," Laura Echevarria, communications director and press secretary for the National Right to Life Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
The Dobbs decision set in motion two Texas laws that placed further restriction on abortion and criminalized the doctors providing the controversial procedure.
Some providers resumed abortions until six weeks of pregnancy after abortion rights advocates filed a challenge to the 1925 ban in late June; by early July the state Supreme Court upheld the ban.
The state's trigger law, passed in 2021 as a contingency if Roe was struck down, took effect Aug. 25 and increased the maximum sentence for providers to life imprisonment.
The overall effect was essentially the elimination of abortion in the state, though the procedure had already dropped substantially after Texas' successful passage of SB 8 last year. According to state data, abortions dropped 61% from August to September.
According to the Examiner, from January to July, 17,194 abortions have occurred in Texas, approximately half of the number of procedures that were done during the same time period last year. All except 14 were performed within the first eight weeks of pregnancy this year, in keeping with the limited exceptions of SB 8.
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