Pro-life laws in Texas are responsible for saving the lives of countless women and unborn babies in 2024, but the state’s work to protect both mothers and their children from the abortion industry is not over yet.
According to the updated Induced Terminations of Pregnancy (ITOP) report released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) this week, physicians and hospitals in the Lone Star State performed zero elective abortions last year.
Ever since the Texas Heartbeat Act went into effect in September 2021, which effectively banned ending the lives of unborn babies beyond six weeks gestation, thousands of pregnant women and their children have escaped the life-threatening harms that are caused by abortion.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 and the state’s prohibition on ending life in the womb unless a woman’s life or one of her major bodily functions was in danger went into effect, abortions in Texas tumbled even further. The red state went from recording thousands of elective abortions each month to receiving zero reports of elective abortions each year starting in 2023 and extending into 2024.
“These numbers make it absolutely clear that Texas’ pro-life laws are protecting women and unborn babies in our state,” Communications Director for Texas Alliance for Life Amy O’Donnell said in a statement. “No doctor has been prosecuted, sued, or sanctioned for providing an abortion to save a woman’s life. No woman has lost her life for lack of an exception in the law. Misinformation suggesting otherwise spreads unnecessary fear among pregnant women and misleads the public about what our laws actually say.”
Despite its effective elimination of elective abortions, Texas still recorded 54 total abortions in 2024, which were all completed under the exceptions outlined in state statutes. That number is down from the 62 exception abortions recorded in 2023.
Approximately 42 of the 54 abortions recorded in 2024 were performed between 15 and 20 weeks, the gestational period in which most Americans believe abortion should be “generally illegal.” The state also recorded one late-term abortion, which was used to end the life of a baby between 21 and 25 weeks gestation.
Of the 54 attempts to end the life of an unborn child, eight resulted in infants born alive. Under Lone Star State law, physicians must treat babies who survive botched abortions with the same level of care and vigilance as they would a child born prematurely. Texas code also recognizes abortion survivors, no matter how small, have the same “rights, powers, and privileges” as “any other child born alive after the normal gestation period.”
There is an ongoing narrative touted by the pro-abortion media and their allies in the Democrat party that abortion through all nine months by either drug or dismemberment is safe and good but pro-life laws are to blame if something goes wrong. The latest data in Texas shows anything but.
A large portion of the 2024 total abortions, nearly 63 percent, were induced via the abortion pill regimen known for causing life-threatening complications.
While none of the women who received any of the abortions, whether by drug or otherwise, died, many of them experienced medical complications ranging from shock to sepsis to severe blood loss — side effects often linked to fetal dismemberment and abortion drug mifepristone.
The harms flagged to Texas HHS by physicians included but were not limited to 29 reports of hemorrhage, 37 reports of incomplete abortions, and 13 reports of infection across all 54 abortions. Complications reported by facilities, which often serve as duplicates of those reported by physicians, included 32 counts of hemorrhage, 42 incomplete abortions, and 15 counts of infection.
This already high percentage of complications does not account for the fallout of abortions conducted at home with mail-in abortion pills prescribed by telehealth doctors in other states. Nor does it count the physical and emotional costs for Texas residents who traveled to blue states to obtain abortions.
The former method is largely illegal under Texas law, and certain Texas counties’ ordinances prohibit the latter, but the practices continue anyway. The Republicans tasked with enforcing pro-life prohibitions on these deadly loopholes, however, are aware of them and are taking action.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor in December after she prescribed a Dallas-area woman an abortion pill that not only killed her unborn child but sent her to the hospital with potentially fatal complications.
“In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Paxton said in a statement released shortly after he filed suit.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
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