Since a June 2022 Supreme Court decision allowed U.S. states to ban or severely restrict abortion rights, the birth rate has gone up, particularly where it’s most difficult to get an abortion. Not a surprise, right?

Dubbed the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court ruling said there is no constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion under Roe v. Wade and opened the doors for the individual states to make their own laws about abortion.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which offers a state by state analysis of the abortion situation, says fourteen states have outright bans on abortion. Abortion is protected by state law in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia and is at risk of being severely limited or prohibited in twenty-six states and three territories.

In an NPR interview, Caitlin Myers, a professor at Middlebury College, discussed a study by Middlebury and Georgia Tech that showed a 2.3 percent increase in births. They also see people flooding from abortion-banning states to other states for abortions. These options are not available to everyone. In a large state like Texas, for example, where births increased 5.3 percent, they might have to drive hundreds of miles to find a state where abortion is still allowed. Travel to access abortion requires money, time off work, and sometimes access to child care. Aborting via medication by mail is another option, but it may not be the best option for everyone, and it’s not easy to get a prescription.

While people are still having abortions, some feel trapped in unwanted pregnancies and are having babies they might not otherwise have had, Myers said.

In an article for NBC News, writer Suzanne Gamboa said a study by the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality showed the Texas teen birthrate for Latinos has risen dramatically since the abortion ban. “Texas women delivered 16,147 more babies in 2022 than in 2021. Of those, 84 percent were delivered by Latinas. In addition, the average fertility rate rose 5.1 percent among Latinas while the overall fertility rate for Texas rose by 2 percent.”

Another factor: For many, abortion is something done quietly, often in secret. How do you keep it secret when you have to go to such efforts to find someone willing to do the procedure? It might be easier to just have the baby.

What has this got to do with being childless by marriage? When I was researching my Childless by Marriage book, I was astonished by the number of women who had had abortions, sometimes more than one. Many were encouraged or even ordered to do so by partners who did not want any children. For some, the aborted pregnancy turned out to be their only chance to become mothers. If abortion had not been legal and relatively easy to obtain, would they have had children? Would they be raising them alone after their men dumped them?

I have more questions than answers about all of this. I am Catholic and not a big fan of abortion, but I hate to see people’s rights so restricted. I have not had an abortion, nor have I helped anyone else through the process, so you readers may know more about it than I do. What do you think? How will the abortion ban affect people in situations where one partner is unwilling to have children? If you have personal experience in this area, would you be willing to tell us about it? Have you considered what you would do if you fell pregnant and didn’t feel able to have the child? If you live in another country, what is the abortion situation there?

(photo by Ashley Jones, Pexels.com)

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The marvelous Jody Day interviewed me on June 29 about my new book No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s. If you missed it, you can watch it here.