Health
The Women Most Affected by Abortion Bans
Abortion bans successfully prevented some women from getting abortions in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to a detailed new study of birth data from 2023. The effects were most pronounced among women in certain groups — Black and Hispanic women, women without a college degree, and women living farthest from a clinic.
Abortion has continued to rise since the period the data covers, especially through pills shipped into states with bans. But the study identifies the groups of women who are most likely to be affected by bans.
For the average woman in states that banned abortion, the distance to a clinic increased to 300 miles from 50 miles, resulting in a 2.8 percent increase in births relative to what would have been expected without a ban.
For Hispanic women living 300 miles from a clinic, births increased 3.8 percent. For Black women, it was 3.2 percent, and for white women 2 percent.
“It really tracks, both that women who are poorer and younger and have less education are more likely to have an unintended pregnancy, and more likely to be unable to overcome the barriers to abortion care,” said Dr. Alison Norris, an epidemiology professor at Ohio State who helps lead a nationwide abortion counting effort and was not involved in the new study.
The working paper, released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is the first to analyze detailed local patterns in births soon after the Dobbs decision in 2022, a period when abortion was declining or about flat nationwide.
Unexpectedly, abortions have increased nationwide since then. Researchers say this is evidence of unmet demand for abortions before Dobbs. Since then, telehealth and a surge in financial assistance have made it easier for women to get abortions, in both states with bans and where it remained legal.
But the new findings suggest that the assistance didn’t reach everyone. State bans appear to have prevented some women from having abortions they would have sought if they were legal.
The national increase in abortion masks that some people were “trapped by bans,” said Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College and an author of the paper with Daniel Dench and Mayra Pineda-Torres at Georgia Tech. “What’s happened is an increase in inequality of access: Access is increasing for some people and not for others.”
The rise in births was small, suggesting that most women who wanted abortions had still gotten them, said Diana Greene Foster, the director of research at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California at San Francisco. Still, she said, the new study was persuasive in showing the effects of bans: “I now feel more convinced that some people really did have to carry pregnancies to term.”
John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, said that a federal abortion ban would work better than a patchwork of state policies, and that states like Texas needed to do more to reduce out-of-state travel and mail-order abortion pills. But he did think Texas’ law was making a difference.
“We obviously are seeing the evidence that the bans are actually preventing abortions,” he said. “They’re actually saving lives.”
Previous studies have measured changes in the abortion rate, but Professor Myers said looking at the number of babies born is the most definitive way to know whether abortion bans actually work. Research from the years before Roe was overturned showed that longer distances from clinics affected abortions and births.
“This is the paper I’ve been waiting to write for years,” she said. “These are the data I was waiting for.”
The data she wanted was detailed birth certificates filed in 2023. Mothers include information about their age, race, marital status, level of education and home address in nearly every state, making demographic comparisons possible. The researchers used a statistical method that compared places with similar birthrates before Dobbs to estimate how much a ban changed the expected birthrate.
They also used county-level data to look at changes in births within states. In counties in states with bans where the distance to the nearest clinic in another state didn’t change, births increased 1 percent. In counties where the distance increased by more than 200 miles, births increased 5 percent.
In Texas, the largest state with an abortion ban, births increased more in Houston, where the nearest clinic is 600 miles away in Kansas, than they did in El Paso, where the nearest clinic is 20 miles away in New Mexico. Similarly, births increased more in the South, where states are surrounded by other states with bans, but very little in eastern Missouri, where there are abortion clinics across the border in Illinois.
The researchers also looked at appointment availability at nearby clinics, because some clinics have been overrun with people traveling from other states. They found that if women were unable to get an appointment within two weeks, births increased even more.
Still, even in places with bans that had no change in distance to the nearest clinic or appointment availability there, relative births increased slightly, which Professor Myers attributed to “a chilling effect” of bans.
The findings are in line with other research. A previous analysis, using state-level data through 2023 and a different statistical method, found that births increased 1.7 percent, and more among women who were Black or Hispanic, unmarried, without college degrees, or on Medicaid.
“Using different methods, using slightly different data, we’re coming to the same conclusion about the disparate impacts of these policies on populations,” said Suzanne Bell, a demographer at Johns Hopkins and an author of that paper. “I think that’s adding further evidence to the notion that these are real impacts that we’re capturing.”
Since the study’s county-level data ends after 2023, it’s possible that births in states with bans have decreased since then. Abortions nationwide have continued to increase, including for women in states with bans.
Doctors in states that passed so-called shield laws, which protect them from legal liability if they send pills into states with bans, began doing so in earnest during the summer of 2023. Abortions done this way would not affect birth data until 2024.
But using provisional state-level birth data from 2024, the new paper found almost no change in births from 2023. This data is less reliable, but researchers said that even with shield laws, some women are still unlikely to get an abortion — especially those with fewer resources, who may not know about telehealth abortion sites or are wary of ordering pills online.
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Along a bustling sidewalk in Boston, a bright yellow payphone invites folks to “call a Boomer.”
Almost 3,000 miles away in Reno, Nevada, a nearly identical phone prompts residents of Sierra Manor – an apartment complex for seniors – to “Call a Zoomer.” The goal is simple: to get strangers to talk to each other.
The project, often referred to as simply “Call a Boomer,” is the latest initiative from Matter Neuroscience, a New York-based company dedicated to mapping the “biomarkers of happiness.”
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By connecting “two of the loneliest demographics” (older adults and younger adults), the project aims to prove that on a molecular level, “humans need one another in order to be happy,” according to Calla Kessler, a social strategist at Matter Neuroscience.
Along a bustling sidewalk in Boston, a bright yellow payphone invites folks to “Call a Boomer.” (Matter Neuroscience)
“Younger adults and older adults tend to experience the highest levels of loneliness of any age group,” the company wrote on its website. “So the goal of this project is to inspire generational connection through meaningful conversations, despite differences in age, lifestyle or politics.”
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The hope, according to Kessler, is that the calls will shift the brain’s focus from stress to bonding.
“Our neuroscience angle is cannabinoids over cortisol,” Kessler told Fox News Digital. “Cannabinoids are the feel-good neurotransmitter in our brain that creates that warm feeling with a friendship — and when you activate cannabinoids, you’re counteracting the negative effects of cortisol, which is our primary stress hormone.”
“Younger adults and older adults tend to experience the highest levels of loneliness of any age group,” the company noted. (Matter Neuroscience)
This isn’t Matter’s first round of payphones. Its initial experiment connected one of the most liberal cities in the U.S. (San Francisco) with one of the most conservative (Abilene, Texas).
“We basically just wanted people to find common ground and encourage people to think beyond labels,” Kessler said.
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She noted that the negative results were “almost negligible,” with most participants enjoying their time speaking to different people.
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Now, the focus has shifted from political labels to generational divides.
The negative results have beem “almost negligible,” with most participants enjoying their time speaking to different people. (Matter Neuroscience)
As the “Call a Boomer” experiment continues, the team is busy collecting audio files of these intergenerational chats to prove that simple connections with other humans can help improve mental health.
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“Our research is essentially trying to find a non-pharmaceutical cure to depression,” Kessler added.
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Looking ahead, she said, “we’ll definitely be doing fun things that we hope get people’s attention and inspire them to learn a little more about themselves.”
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A New York City father is desperately seeking a donor to save his teenage son’s life.
Max Uribe, now 15 and a high-school freshman, has just weeks until he will need to be hospitalized with a rare blood disorder that could lead to a deadly cancer.
“Max was just 6 when we first noticed there was something wrong with his blood counts,” his father, Juan Uribe, told Fox News Digital. “At the time, we thought it was due to a viral infection, but they never fully recovered back to their normal level.”
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In December 2024, Max’s condition grew worse, and he was diagnosed with clonal cytopenia, a condition involving the blood and bone marrow.
“All three of his blood counts are low — red, white and platelets,” Uribe said.
Max Uribe, pictured with his parents and sister, is in urgent need of a stem cell transplant to save his life. (Uribe Family)
In August 2025, another bone marrow biopsy revealed that Max is on a path to bone marrow failure, creating an urgent need for a stem cell transplant.
“The disease has continued to progress, as his blood counts continue to drop, and therefore, we have to take him to transplant in May of this year,” Uribe said.
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If left untreated, Max’s condition could lead to MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome), a type of blood cancer, and from there possibly into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
A bone marrow match must have a specific type of HLA (human leukocyte antigen), which are proteins found on the surface of most cells in the body, according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).
Max Uribe, pictured with his parents, will be hospitalized for a transplant in May, as his blood count has been steadily decreasing. (Uribe Family)
The closer the donor’s HLA markers are to the patient’s, the more likely the body will accept the new cells without a high risk of complications.
People from the same ethnic background are more likely to share similar HLA types, meaning a patient is most likely to find a compatible donor among individuals with similar ancestry, per the NMDP.
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Non-Hispanic White patients have a 79% chance of a perfect match. That drops to 49% for Hispanic/Latino patients, 29% for Black patients and even lower for mixed ancestries, the NMDP reports.
Because Max is a “very rare combination” of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult, Uribe noted.
“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating.”
“For a kid like Max, with complex, mixed heritage, the math is devastating,” he said. “The thinking is, we need large numbers if we’re going to have that perfect match for my son.”
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Max, who participates in competitive tennis and varsity wrestling, just had additional blood work done on Friday, which revealed that his counts continue to plummet.
“We’re at the point where this is beginning to manifest a bit more, which is why the urgency is so critical,” Uribe said.
Because Max is a “very rare combination” of half-Colombian from his father and a mix of Italian, British and German from his mother, his path to a perfect match is proving much more difficult. (Uribe Family)
If a donor is not secured by Max’s hospitalization in May, the medical team will have to proceed with a partial match, which is not ideal for a number of reasons.
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“The survival rate is meaningfully lower with a partial match, and there’s more risk of graft versus host disease (GVHD), which could lead to complications in the process,” Uribe said. With GVHD, the donor cells begin to attack the body.
Max Uribe, an active athlete, is on a path to bone marrow failure, requiring a stem cell transplant. (Uribe Family)
To help prevent this with a partial match, Max would likely need chemotherapy and immunosuppressants for a longer period of time, which could weaken his immune system.
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Anyone interested in donating can order a free test kit on the Team Max website. The kit includes a quick cheek swab that is sent back to the lab to determine whether someone is a match.
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