After Planned Parenthood closures, poor women started having more babies

Since Texas slashed funding to Planned Parenthood in 2011, more than half the state's abortion clinics have shuttered - and data show births among poor women have surged.

Researchers looked at fertility trends among women who qualified for birth control through the state's public family planning programs in the two years before and after Texas lawmakers booted Planned Parenthood from its payroll. Each woman lived in a county that lost a Planned Parenthood clinic and had, at some point, received an injectable contraceptive from an affiliate before it closed.

The group's birthrate shot up.

Between 2011 and 2014, the number of these births, covered by Medicaid, climbed 27 percent, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Medicaid coverage for healthy pregnancies - prenatal care, labor and delivery - typically costs at least $8,000 per baby.)

The birth increase coincided with a 36 percent drop in claims for long-acting contraceptives, including implants and intrauterine devices - meaning significantly fewer women started using what gynecologists consider the most effective form of birth control. Claims for injectable contraceptives fell 31 percent. No significant change emerged in women obtaining birth control pills and contraceptive rings.

Joseph Potter, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin who cowrote the study, said there's no way to prove the Planned Parenthood closures sparked a baby boom.

Perhaps more women simply decided, at higher-than-previous rates, to have babies. Or perhaps they couldn't find or fund another contraceptive shot, which need to be taken every three months to stay effective. Perhaps they simply lost access to reliable birth control, in general.

"You've got a very strong signal that there was an impact of [the Texas exclusion of Planned Parenthood]," Potter said. "The thing about this study, it more or less contradicts the claim you can't implement that policy at no cost, without hurting people."

The study, which comes as the debate over abortion rages on and Planned Parenthood stays firmly in the spotlight, received funding from the Susan T. Buffett Foundation, a Planned Parenthood supporter. Potter said the foundation wasn't involved in the research and did not ask to see the study.

In 2011, Texas became the first state to block funding to Planned Parenthood, cutting its family-planning funds by 66 percent and redirecting the rest to general health-care providers. After excluding Planned Parenthood, a qualified provider under federal law, the state lost all federal funding for its women's health program. The new, entirely state-run Texas Women's Health Program bars funds from clinics that offer abortions.