The demographics of the fertility spike were lopsided, the researchers noted. Fertility rates rose “most markedly among Hispanic women and specifically among Hispanic women 25-44 years old, who saw aggregated fertility rate rises of 8.0% and 8.5%, respectively.”
The birth rate for women 15-19 years old also rose for the first time in 15 years, they said, by about 0.39%.
The rise in the overall rate of fertility was the first observed in Texas since 2014, the study said. They noted that researchers from Johns Hopkins University directly connected the heartbeat bill to an increase of nearly 10,000 births in the state.
Though broad post-Roe fertility data are presently unavailable, the researchers pointed out that the heartbeat bill’s effects “provide an initial sense of what may follow in other states with bans, post Dobbs.”
Other researchers, they noted, have already predicted “a likely 5.1% rise in the overall fertility rate in the state” due to the effects of the state’s total abortion ban in the wake of Roe’s repeal.
Other data have indicated a notable drop in abortions in the U.S. since Roe’s repeal in June 2022, which brought an end to nearly five decades of federalized abortion rights in the United States.
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