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Paul Brown

Jun 16 • 23 tweets • 10 min read Twitter logo

If you're interested in abortion numbers post-Dobbs, this thread is for you 🧵
(I'm going to reference some sources, which I'll hyperlink at the bottom of the thread, FYI)

In February I compiled a bunch of data from sources including Texas Health & Human Services, Texas Policy Evaluation Project, the Journal of the American Medical Association, & the US Census Bureau in order to figure out what abortions in Texas looked like post-Dobbs.

Since virtually all the abortion clinics in TX shut down, the obvious question for many would be, "What abortions? It's illegal now. Right?"

Wrong.

I was looking specifically for data on out-of-state abortions and mail-order abortions, and what the data suggested was tragic.

We estimated that in the 12-months post Dobbs, 2,743 TX women traveled out of state for abortions, and another 1,605 ordered abortifacients by mail EACH MONTH, for a total of 4,348 monthly. This comes out to 52,176 abortions amongst TX women ANNUALLY.

Consistently I have told people that I consider this to be a CONSERVATIVE estimate, and that the real numbers are likely higher.

Yesterday, that belief was confirmed when I did some work to refresh my data. While I was unable to find any new scholarly studies showing the new

data for out-of-state and mail-order abortions, I was able to find some articles with reliable data that shed some light on the issue. In April NBC put out an article that showed an 18.69% INCREASE in mail-order abortions from Aid Access in the 3 months following the most recent

data I had previously reviewed. Based on the previous trends that showed increases prior to that, it's reasonable to believe that there have been further increases even since then.

While 18.69% is an incredibly large increase when we are already talking about tens of thousands

per year, that was nothing compared to what the New York Times article showed.

Previously all our data on mail-order abortifacients was based solely upon distribution from one group: Aid Access, for the simple reason that we just didn't have reliable data around other groups,

though we knew other groups were active. However, in April the NYT reported that Aid Access only made up about 46% of all abortifacients distributed, while Las Libres distributed another 35%, and the remaining 19% were provided by a mix of other distributors. That represents a

117% increase in the numbers of distributed mail-order abortifacients from our previously available numbers.

As stated in some of my previous Tweets, my focus has been Texas, but the NBC/NYT data is nationally focused. What that means is, I'm not able to precisely estimate

what these new numbers mean for Texas, but it is reasonable to suggest that we are looking at 5,000 to 10,000 more abortions amongst Texas women annually over our previous estimate, taking it to between 57,176 and 62,176 ANNUALLY, an INCREASE from previous years.

TLDR: Abortion numbers have not decreased since the Dobbs decision. They had increased. This is a direct result of carefully planned pro life legislation that makes abortion 100% legal for mothers by giving them total civil and criminal legal immunity for their abortions. The

solution is super simple: The law should clearly, explicitly extend equal protection under the law to humans from the moment of fertilization by treating every abortion like murder for all parties involved (including the mother). This should be true at the state level (in every