The number of abortions in Texas fell 50% in September when compared to the year before, according to new data released Friday.
The decrease is a clear sign that the state’s new restrictive ban on abortions is having its intended effect. Senate Bill 8 was enacted on September 1st and prohibitis the procedure after fetal cardiac activity is detected – usually around the sixth week of pregnancy, before many women know they’re carrying. The law makes no exceptions for rape or incest.
The New York Times reports:
No prior Texas abortion restriction has been followed by a drop so steep. But it is also smaller than many experts predicted. Before the ban, 84 percent of people seeking abortions in Texas were more than six weeks pregnant at their appointment, according to previous research from the same group, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
The researchers explain that many women likely rushed to get an abortion in September before they reached a point in their pregnancies when the procedure would be unavailable due to the law: “Patients […] may have decided to miss work, school or give up other responsibilities out of concern they would no longer be eligible if they waited to schedule around these obligations.”
The researchers also discovered “early evidence, in the form of long waiting times for appointments, that Texans seeking out-of-state abortion care are straining capacity at the small number of facilities in nearby states.”
Having to leave the state for an abortion is also expensive. “$550 is the average cost for an abortion and then when you start to add in travel, hotel and food costs, those costs skyrocket, potentially to hundreds of dollars or more,” Elizabeth Nash, lead state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, told Axios.
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on two challenges to the Texas law next week.
