Though advocates don’t describe them this way, anti-abortion policies clearly aim to push women both into more unplanned pregnancies and down the ladder of civic power. Likewise, anti-gay and anti-transgender policies aim to push the growing group of young people who identify as LGBTQ back into the closet, and into heterosexual relationships and more pregnancies, planned and unplanned. It’s not a surprise that we found that in Texas, after the state imposed a six-week abortion in 2021, the 2022 teen birth rate (and specifically the rate of births to non-white teens) rose for the first time in 15 years, though slightly, while fertility rates for Hispanic women 25–44 (ages with greatest likelihood of inability to travel for an abortion due to having children already at home) rose markedly—foreshadowing post-Dobbs 2023 birth (and poverty) data to come, in Texas and many other states as well.
-- Elizabeth Gregory, "From 'Don’t Say Gay' to Abortion Bans, There’s a New Pronatalism Afoot" (THE NATION).
