Just two months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions in Texas fell by 99%, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24 and the state’s trigger law aimed at protecting preborn children from abortion once Roe had fallen wasn’t scheduled to take effect until August. However, the data show that only 68 abortions were committed in July and only three were committed in August, compared to 2,596 abortions in June, marking a 99% decrease. Between January and July of 2022, 17,194 abortions were committed in Texas compared to 35,441 abortions during the same period in 2021 (prior to the state’s implementation of the Texas Heartbeat Act in September 2021). KXAN reported that between August (5,706 abortions) and September (2,251 abortions) of 2021, the number of abortions committed dropped by 61%.
Abortionists in the state seemingly stopped committing abortions after Roe fell, before the state’s trigger law took effect. “I think that part of that was the confusion afterward, but we’re also seeing that the law in Texas took effect, and when it did, Texas was seeing a significant drop off in the number of abortions that were being performed,” Laura Echevarria, communications director and press secretary for the National Right to Life Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
Judges recently threw out a stunt lawsuit, which had been filed with the intention of seeing the Texas Heartbeat Act overturned. In September 2021 shortly after the law took effect, abortionist Alan Braid committed a first-trimester abortion in violation of that law, and was immediately sued by pro-abortion plaintiffs. Their goal was to have the pro-life law declared unconstitutional. But on December 8, 2022, District Judge Aaron Haas threw out the lawsuit, stating that the plaintiff, Felipe Gomez, had no connection to the abortion and therefore had no grounds to sue. Gomez is expected to appeal the decision, while Braid has moved across the state border to continuing aborting preborn babies.
