INSTITUTE INDEX: A win for women's rights in landmark Texas abortion case

By Sue Sturgis / July 1, 2016

Reproductive rights advocates celebrated this week's Supreme Court ruling striking down a restrictive Texas abortion law. The ruling has implications for other states with similar laws, which are widespread across the South. (Photo by Victoria Pickering via Flickr.)

Date on which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two Texas laws that created significant barriers to women's abortion access by imposing burdensome regulations on abortion clinics that other health care facilities don't have to meet: 6/27/2016

The court's split on the decision: 5-3

Portion of clinics in Texas that would have been shuttered by the laws: 3/4

Number of clinics that the laws would have left open in Texas: 10

Number of Texas women of reproductive age those 10 clinics would have been expected to serve: 5.4 million

Days after the Texas decision that the high court announced it would not review lower-court decisions from Mississippi and Wisconsin blocking abortion restrictions similar to those it struck down, and that Alabama's attorney general announced he would no longer enforce a similar law in his state: 1

Year in which Louisiana passed its own restrictive abortion law, which is also being challenged in the federal courts, and which experts have said is now likely to be overturned: 2014

Number of states with these laws imposing special regulations on abortion, known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP laws: 24

Of the 13 Southern states, number that passed TRAP laws: 11

Number of times more likely a woman is to die of childbirth, which under Texas law is allowed to be overseen by a midwife in the mother's own home, than abortion: 14

Number of women in the U.S. who died of legally induced abortions in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available: 2

Number of women who die in the U.S. each year from complications of pregnancy or childbirth: 800

Number of countries worldwide where mortality from pregnancy and childbirth is increasing, including the U.S.: 8

Factor by which African-American women in the U.S. are more likely to die of pregnancy or childbirth than white women: 3

Number of restrictions on abortion that states have enacted since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure in its 1972 Roe v. Wade decision: at least 1,074

Portion of those restrictions enacted just since 2010: more than 1/4

Rank of the South among regions where women face some of the most severe restrictions on abortion: 1

(Click on figure to go to source.)

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