RIGHT TO CHOOSE

Texas Women Faced an Unprecedented Abortion Ban. That Didn’t Stop Many of Them.

The September ban on abortions in Texas forced many women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies to travel across state lines or order abortion pills online.

Two new studies out of Texas suggest abortions fell by just 10 percent after the state banned the procedure for anyone more than six weeks pregnant in September, far less than first thought. The studies—both from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin—say women who wanted to end their pregnancies still did so either by crossing state lines or ordering pills to terminate their pregnancies online. Those who did forego ending their pregnancies if they could not find other means, however, often suffer in carrying their pregnancies to term, the report found. “The law is semi-effective,” one of the researchers Abigail R.A. Aiken, said, according to the New York Times. “It will not stop all abortions.”