Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today is part one of a two-part series on the consequences of restricting abortion. In this first

episode, I speak with Suzanne Bell, a Hopkins demographic researcher, about a new report

that quantifies the effects of SB 8, Texas's extremely restrictive abortion bill, that passed

in 2021. Bell's research puts an actual number to the question of how many additional live

births resulted after the bill was passed.

It also brings empirical data to the conversation about how impactful abortion bills can

be.

Next up, look for episode 657, where part two of the series explores some of the far-reaching

unintended consequences of abortion bans on the entire medical system.

Please note that this podcast today contains content about pregnancy and abortion.

Let's listen.

Suzanne Bell, thank you so much for being on public health on call today.

Thanks.

Happy to be here.

So you recently released a report with some colleagues that actually calculated how many more live births there were in the state of Texas following some incredibly strict abortion bans that passed in 2021. So tell us a

little bit about this. Yeah, thanks, Lindsay. So we have seen in other research that abortion

bans and restrictions have led to reductions in facility-based abortions and increases in

...