The Texas abortion ban has come with unintended consequences, from creating potentially deadly confusion when women seek medically necessary abortions to scaring away the state’s OB/GYN workforce.
Now, data suggest there may be yet another unexpected aftereffect: a rise in teen birth rates.
The fertility rate for Texas teens rose for the first time in 15 years in 2022, the year after the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect, a University of Houston study found. Since then, the Supreme Court has overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, resulting in Texas instituting a near-total ban on abortion care.
In large part, the 2022 increase was driven by increased birth rates among Hispanic teens, according the analysis by the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality. The report also noted that the slight rise in Texas’ teen birthrate came while those of U.S. teens in general continued their steady decline.
Dr. Bianca Allison, an assistant professor of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the University of North Carolina, said it may take two or three more years of data to conclusively pin the rise in Texas’ teen pregnancy rate on its abortion ban.
However, she said the prohibition on abortion care is yet another barrier faced by Texas teens as they look to avoid unwanted pregnancies that can carry serious consequences for their health and ability to achieve their educational and work objectives.
“Ever since the Dobbs decision, we know that lots of different laws have gone into effect in Texas that have changed a person’s — especially a young person’s — ability to get reproductive healthcare, so not just abortion care, but contraceptive care and other things,” Allison said.
“The restriction around abortion is one thing, but then we’ve also seen a change in how restrictive the healthcare environment has been around clinicians providing care, that insurance coverage for abortion and contraception has changed, that parental consent laws continue to be in place around abortion care,” she added.
Texas’ increasing restrictions on abortion have forced the closure of many clinics that also provide contraceptive services and sexual education, Allison noted. That’s likely to create a compounding effect when it comes to the problem of teen pregnancy.
“I think the story of what’s happening for young people who are even able to successfully access abortion, or successfully access contraception, is just the amount of things that they have to navigate, the number of barriers they have to overcome to get that care,” she said.
The majority of abortions are induced with medication, making the procedure incredibly safe, especially compared to the risks of a young person carrying a pregnancy, Allison also said.
Young people who are pregnant and birthing tend face disproportionately higher health risks than adults, including for anemia, sexually transmitted infections and preeclampsia, a serious blood pressure issue that can arise during pregnancy. They’re also face higher risks of delivering premature births and low-birth weight babies.
“The younger the age of the person, the higher their risk of having some of these more negative outcomes from their pregnancy or birth, versus, potentially, a very safe procedure or process of getting an abortion — or simply accessing contraception to prevent an unintended pregnancy,” Allison said.
The University of Houston study notes that unplanned pregnancies, especially among teens, have other implications for the mothers, including stunting their educational attainment and skill levels and increasing the likelihood they’ll end up in poverty.
While the numbers show teen parents are less likely to finish high school, pursue higher education and attain good-paying jobs, Allison said Texas and other states should look for ways to support them and reverse those trends.
“What I would say is that if there are going to be teen parents — which there always will be — that what we need to do is recognize that there are lots of systems that they actually need strengthened to be able to parent really effectively,” she said. “Otherwise, we are just harming the potential of generations to be able to achieve not only their reproductive health outcomes that they want but economic and educational outcomes.”
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This article appears in Jan 22 – Feb 4, 2025.
