A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on abortion, according to new report from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.
While it is obvious that it would happen, the demographics skew things a bit, since by far the increase was among Hispanic women, while white and black women still showed a decline. I say skewed because Texas has the 2nd or third highest per capita population of Hispanics, so to get a more accurate data point, you would want to know how the teen birth rate of hispanic women from other states was instead of the total of any race.
While it’s a certainty that Texas laws have caused more unwanted teen births, it would be nice to have more accurate data points.
Do you think the abortion law might not have anything to do with the change in birth rate among Hispanic teens? I guess I’m not sure why breaking this out into racial demographics is adding anything to our understanding of the trend.
Examining why hispanic girls seem to be disproportionately affected by the law could be an interesting followon study.
I specified in my comment that I was sure it had something to do with it, but that doesn’t change that it would still be on a downward trend if not for Hispanics, and since there’s only a few states that the hispanic population is large enough to significantly change the data.
