(LifeSiteNews) — Texas abortions fell from around 50,000 in 2020 and 2021 to just 34 for the bulk of 2023 after the Lone Star State passed some of the nation’s toughest pro-life laws, according to a new state report.
Data released by Texas Health and Human Services shows that 34 abortions were reported between January 1 and September 15, 2023. That’s a stark contrast from the 53,949 abortions performed in 2020 and the 50,783 in 2021.
Abortion numbers in the state were then sharply reduced in 2022, the year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thereby allowed Texas’ laws prohibiting abortion to take effect. A total of 21,930 abortions were reported to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for 2022.
This year, abortions haven’t come anywhere near even the 2022 numbers, suggesting that the pro-life legislation fully in force in the state have been responsible for saving many thousands of innocent lives.
As LifeSiteNews has reported, Texas implemented its heartbeat law allowing private citizens to file lawsuits against abortionists who kill babies after about six weeks’ gestation in 2021, and that same year passed a trigger law to ban nearly all abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. That law, as well as a 1925 law providing criminal penalties for abortionists, kicked in after the June 2022 Dobbs decision that reversed Roe along with Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
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All 2023 Texas abortions were reported as having been performed both “due to medical emergency” and to preserve the mother’s health. Current Texas laws permit physicians to perform abortions to save a mother’s life or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Pro-lifers point out that the deliberate killing of a preborn baby is morally unjustifiable and never medically necessary. Medical interventions to deal with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies are not abortions and are not treated as such under Texas law.
In a recent high-profile case, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of an unborn baby whose mother wanted to abort her disabled preborn daughter citing health concerns. However, the mother has reportedly opted to travel out of state to kill the child.
The incident illustrates that, while the 2023 Texas HHS numbers appear to be good news for babies and the pro-life cause, it remains unclear how many Texas babies may have been killed by abortionists in other pro-abortion states like New Mexico or California, and how many could have been killed via chemical abortions, i.e. by their mothers taking abortion drugs.
“Self-managed” abortions might not be reported to the state health department, and it’s unclear whether or how many women may have obtained abortion pills illegally. Chemical abortion decisions made by federal officials under the Biden administration have permitted the large-scale distribution of abortion drugs across the country after the rollback of Roe.
Data released in the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning’s “#WeCount Report” in October 2023 indicated that abortions committed via the lethal drugs sent by online abortion providers spiked 72% after the overthrow of Roe last year and now represent some 8% of all U.S. abortions, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
According to a 2021 article reprinted by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, “One state health department has already informed the Charlotte Lozier Institute that they do not attempt to collect data from out-of-state providers who mail abortion pills to state residents.”
A case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether or not to restrict the top abortion drug mifepristone, which is typically used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to kill unborn children by essentially starving them.
RELATED: Supreme Court agrees to review pivotal FDA abortion pill case
And it’s not just abortion drugs that could be complicating the otherwise positive news from Texas.
In addition, the “WeCount” report from October alleges that the substantial abortion rate declines in pro-life states have been balanced out by women traveling for out-of-state abortions. According to the data, the 14 U.S. states with near-total abortion bans saw 115,000 fewer legal abortions this year, but 117,000 more legal abortions took place in the nearly three dozen states in which the murder of the preborn is still legal.
However, those numbers have been critiqued by pro-life expert Michael New, who wrote for National Review that “There is less here than meets the eye,” and that, in a “problematic” “methodological shortcoming,” the group had compared a full “year of post-Dobbs abortion data to only two months of pre-Dobbs abortion data.”
Moreover, an April report by the same organization suggested that nationwide abortions had actually substantially declined in the six months immediately after the landmark SCOTUS ruling.
The patchwork nature of pro-life laws after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and the current availability of abortion-inducing drugs accessible via mail order, have sparked renewed calls within the pro-life community for more robust pro-life protections at the federal level.
And the next year could see major changes in national policy.
The current Supreme Court case concerning FDA approval of mifepristone could have a monumental impact on the safety of unborn children in the womb, and pro-life advocates have also pushed for federal gestational age restrictions on abortion and other national laws to protect preborn children. GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a 15-week abortion ban and a six-week heartbeat bill in the Sunshine State, has endorsed a federal 15-week ban. However, frontrunner Donald Trump has distanced himself from the bans and refused to endorse a 15-week restriction at the national level.
The tension has indicated to pro-life advocates that, even with Roe overturned, the fight is far from over.
“While the pro-life community has much to celebrate, the pro-death crowd continues to find methods of killing as many human beings as possible,” Operation Rescue president Troy Newman said in response to 2023 abortion numbers. He added that the “prayers and work involved in exposing the evil behind the Abortion Cartel is more important than ever.”
UPDATE: This article was edited Dec. 18, 2023 for clarity.