Restrictive abortion laws did not reduce the number of actual abortions, only legal ones

Evidence

While the right continues to grandstand on the abortion issue, the abortion rate in the United States is in decline for reasons that have much to do with innovations in long-acting birth control. Access is key, however. Multiple studies show that increased contraceptive access, including better insurance coverage policies, over-the-counter availability, and comprehensive sex education, dramatically reduces rates of both unintended pregnancy and abortion. If antiabortion activists were truly interested in lowering abortion rates, they would champion such measures. Instead, they support measures that interfere with access. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 636 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Roe and Doe had national implications. Thirty-one states had abortion laws like Texas’s, 13 had reformed laws like Georgia’s, and two banned all abortions. Presumably, the Court’s rulings required those states to abandon their abortion laws. Only the four states that had repealed their abortion laws were unaffected. The opinion of the Court also enunciated unusually detailed guidelines governing how states could regulate abortion in the future. The clarity of the Court’s guidelines stood in sharp contrast to the vague “all deliberate speed” formula in Brown v. Board of Education. After Roe, states for the most part knew what sorts of regulations of abortion would survive judicial scrutiny. The very detail of the guidelines, however, particularly in the absence of clear support in the text of the Constitution, opened the Court to criticism that it was legislating rather than judging. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3113 (#qualifies-own, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Roe nullified abortion statutes in forty-six states nationwide — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3113; A model penal law in 1962 reshaped physician and public opinion on abortion restrictions — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3083; Antiabortion activism increases rather than decreases abortion rates — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 636

Broader Connections

• Antiabortion activism increases rather than decreases abortion rates #corroborates (0.82) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 636