Abortion Bans Cost the Country $140 Billion

6.18.26

Click to skip ahead: Anti-Abortion Groups Don’t Care About ‘Coercion’; In the Nation: FDA Updates & Another ‘Defund’ Push; Abortion Bans Are Costing the U.S. Economy Billions; ‘Abortion in the Water’ Update; In the States: Mississippi, Idaho, Illinois; Ballot Box: What’s going on at the Kansas Supreme Court?; Abortion Allowed Her to Choose Motherhood

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Anti-Abortion Groups Don’t Care About ‘Coercion’

Leading anti-abortion groups are using the recent arrest of a Louisiana father to press Trump’s Justice Department to restrict abortion pills. As Jessica reported earlier this week, a man was charged with one count of attempted first-degree feticide and one count of domestic abuse for allegedly slipping his daughter abortion pills. Police say the young woman was hospitalized and given an emergency c-section at 23 weeks.

Despite how few facts are available to the public, anti-abortion groups have quickly seized on and weaponized the story to further their campaign of falsely equating abortion pills with ‘coercion.’ Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said:

“Abortion drug poisoning attacks on women and children are always tragic, but they come as no surprise under a mail-order abortion drug regime that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche must end.”

Students for Life is similarly weaponizing the case, claiming:

“Not only does [telemedicine medication abortion] put women at increased risk, but it also makes it easy for those who aren’t even pregnant to access the deadly pills, making them the perfect tool for abusers and others who want to hide their wrongdoing.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, we know so little about this case, and everything we do know comes from the police. It’s important not to speculate, or rush to take the word of local cops and anti-abortion groups. But even if this case is exactly as it’s being presented—a father nonconsensually gave his pregnant daughter abortion pills—the fact remains that none of this can be blamed on medication abortion access. It’s already a crime to drug someone without their consent.

We also know that abortion bans—a form of state-sanctioned reproductive coercion—only further empower abusers, and have directly led to a surge in reported domestic violence cases and, specifically, reproductive coercion. Anti-abortion activists aren’t concerned with protecting women—they’re concerned with banning abortion.

And, of course, as Jessica wrote earlier this week, we just can’t rush to conclusions with cases like this—all the more so as we watch anti-abortion activists rush to weaponize this case for their agenda:

“Because Republicans and anti-abortion activists have been conflating anything having to do with abortion pills with force and ‘coercion’, they’re muddying the waters and making actual abuse harder to identify.”

Louisiana, you’ll recall, has been leading the charge on this strategy: Attorney General Liz Murrill is suing the FDA to ban telemedicine medication abortion, baselessly claiming this health service empowers abusers. And a Louisiana mother is also awaiting trial on criminal abortion charges: Murrill and local prosecutors accuse her of ‘coercing’ her teen daughter to have an abortion—but, tellingly, the woman has not been charged with coercion.

Another notable point here is the daughter’s emergency c-section. In anti-abortion states (Louisiana, in particular), hospitals are increasingly providing invasive c-sections instead of emergency abortion procedures—even when the latter would cause less harm. We don’t know what the patient’s wishes were here, but it’s something to think about as we learn more about the case.

In the Nation: FDA Updates & Another ‘Defund’ Push

The FDA may share findings from its sham ‘study’ into the safety of mifepristone as soon as July. Keep an eye on your inboxes over the next few days: we’ll be sending you an explainer on what we know about the study, how it’s being conducted (and concerns about who’s conducting it), as well as what might happen next.

Abortion, Every Day broke the news that the federal agency was conducting the study in September, and we’ve been keeping tabs on every development since. It’s been unclear if this so-called safety review was the Trump administration capitulating to anti-abortion activists, or if it was their way of throwing the movement a bone—it could be either or both! Up until recently, the FDA has been slow-walking the review—clearly hoping to delay it until after the midterms. That the study is already underway is a new, concerning development.

Meanwhile, it’s somehow been a year since Congress and the Trump administration defunded Planned Parenthood and abortion providers across the country via a federal budget bill. Now, anti-abortion groups are urgently pressuring Congress to run it back—this time calling for Congress to pass a 10-year provision defunding Planned Parenthood in this year’s reconciliation bill by July 4.

Students for Life is threatening to give lawmakers an F on its “pro-life generation report card” if they fail to do so. This year, Congressional Republicans have focused their efforts related to the reconciliation bill around immigration enforcement, despite threats from anti-abortion groups, prompting groups like Students for Life to turn up the heat. The Hill reports that this bill could pass as early as Friday.

As we reported last year, defunding reproductive health providers comes with massive financial implications. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that defunding Planned Parenthood would raise the deficit by about $300 million.

Abortion Bans Are Costing the U.S. Economy Billions

Speaking of how much abortion bans and restrictions cost the country: a new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows that abortion bans could be costing the U.S. economy an annual average of $140 billion. This makes sense: abortion bans cost women their jobs, or push them into debt to afford pregnancy-related health care costs, child care, and so much more. State-by-state, banned states like Alabama could be losing as much as $3 billion annually.

Past studies have shown large swaths of the labor force won’t work in states that ban abortion, residents of banned states are moving away in droves, rental prices are going down in anti-abortion states while vacancies go up, and prospective college students aren’t even applying to college in abortion-banned states. Another 2025 study showed banned states are losing over $130 billion annually. From Melissa Holly Mahoney at IWPR:

“Abortion bans are a drag on the economy by impacting women’s choices about their careers. When women are unable to make choices about when, or if, to start a family, they are less willing to change jobs, to take time out from employment for education or skills-training, which could then lead to higher-paying jobs.”

More news on the costs of anti-abortion extremism: USAID has reportedly spent more than $360,000 storing unusable contraceptives at an overseas warehouse, after the Trump administration decided not to distribute the contraceptives to foreign countries in need. The State Department erroneously referred to the contraceptives, once worth $9.7 million, as ‘abortifacients’ last year—an obvious move to further restrict birth control.

MS Now notes that the administration will continue to spend over $24,000 a month to store those products in Belgium—all because they refused to distribute them to make a statement to the anti-abortion movement.

‘Abortion in the Water’ Update

Last week, Jessica told you about the coalition of GOP state attorneys general who are asking Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin to classify and regulate the abortion medication mifepristone as a water contaminant. Once a fringe conspiracy theory, the utterly baseless, scientifically unfounded ‘abortion in the water’ narrative has officially gone mainstream.

In response, 22 Democratic AGs have sent their own letter to the agency refuting Republicans, pointing out the GOP letter fails to “offer any meaningful evidence” of their claims.

Remember: the FDA’s initial environmental impact report for mifepristone found that its projected environmental concentration from use is less than 1 part per billion (ppb)—which is to say, mifepristone isn’t causing any pollution whatsoever. To be clear, nor do Republicans care even a little about pollution.

All of this is about spreading lies to get medication abortion banned—and, of course, placing the burden on people who miscarry to use ‘catch kits’ or face potential state investigation.

In the States: Mississippi, Idaho, Illinois

We love to see it: In Mississippi last week, advocates marked the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruling that granted the right to birth control, by erecting an enormous, inflatable IUD between the state Supreme Court building and the Governor’s Mansion, directly across from the state Capitol. Americans for Contraception has now toured dozens of cities across the U.S. to advocate for access to contraception, including in deep-red states like Mississippi.

Democratic state Sen. Kamesha Mumford joined the demonstration and told the crowd:

“That decision was more than about birth control. It was about privacy, dignity and the right for people to make informed decisions about their bodies. We are here to remind Mississippians that no rights are set in stone. We must remain vigilant. We cannot take our rights for granted, even the ones that we feel are a guarantee.”

Arizona Democrats rallied around the same inflatable IUD to advocate for the right to contraception just last week.

The trial for a legal challenge to Idaho’s abortion ban concluded on Monday. The case, brought by maternal fetal medicine specialist Dr. Stacy Seyb, strikes at the ban’s unhelpful exception for medical emergencies. Seyb and his attorneys at the Lawyering Project argue Idaho’s ban violates the U.S. Constitution—and that abortion isn’t just protected to save someone’s life, but to preserve their health.

On Monday, the state brought in anti-abortion Dr. Elena Kraus, a maternal fetal medicine physician, who testified that she believes the ban’s exceptions made it clear when doctors could intervene and provide life-saving abortions. Kraus has a long history of invoking her credentials to testify in favor of anti-abortion policies—but her ‘credentials’ don’t change the reality that these policies kill women. This is true of all anti-abortion activist OBGYNs who conservatives tokenize to justify their laws.

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill, appointed by President Clinton, said he now “[has] to wrestle with this for a little while,” calling the case “fascinating.” I have to say, “fascinating” isn’t necessarily the word I’d use for a case that could decide whether women live or die.

In Illinois, an excellent bill to protect medical privacy for abortion patients now advances to Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk. The Reproductive Health Records Privacy Act would allow information related to abortion to be separated from patients’ other medical records, and restrict out-of-state governments from accessing this data.

Why do we need bills like this, even—especially—in pro-choice states? State Sen. Celina Villanueva explained:

“We’ve heard from patients from other states who have traveled to Illinois and were dropped by their primary care physician once their physician saw via their electronic health record that they got an abortion.”

Illinois has become a top hub for traveling abortion patients in the nation, rendering legislation like this exponentially more important. Pritzker has already vowed to sign the bill.

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Don’t miss our report on the Trump administration’s latest move to codify fetal personhood:

What Trump's Embryo Adoption Program Is Really About

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Ballot Box: What’s going on at the Kansas Supreme Court?

In Kansas, one Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate faced warranted questions from the Capital Area Democratic Women’s group over his past support in the state legislature for a fetal personhood amendment.

The amendment required men to pay child support for pregnancy-related costs from the date of conception. We’ve seen bills like this spring up in legislatures across the country as well as Congress—a thinly veiled, insidious attempt to enshrine fetal personhood.

The candidate, state Sen. Patrick Schmidt, explained this move as an attempt to sabotage the anti-abortion bill as a poison pill. The bill passed the legislature without the amendment. “We weren’t able to get it stopped, but there was nothing that passed on that bill as a result of my actions that changed the outcome for women’s health care in Kansas,” Schmidt explained.

Schmidt is now one of 11 Democrats vying for the Senate seat. With the primary election set for August 4, it’s great to see voters and local Democratic groups hold candidates to account on their abortion positions.

That’s not the only thing happening in Kansas: voters there roundly defeated an anti-abortion ballot measure four years ago, in one of the first post-Dobbs signals of the popularity of abortion at the ballot box. Now, a new ballot measure would change the state’s Supreme Court system so that justices are elected rather than appointed. Currently, a nine-person panel vets and sends three candidates for justices to the governor, who then appoints their pick.

This change might sound innocent enough, but Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes President Emily Wales says, “This is about banning abortion and restricting rights that Kansans have demanded they keep.”

Kansas Public Radio notes that in 2022, GOP Attorney General Kris Kobach outlined a new path to banning abortion—starting with changing the state’s legal system so that justices are elected. Kansas Republicans see this as the best path forward to elect anti-abortion partisans, overturn a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling that established a right to abortion, and allow the legislature to enshrine a ban.

In addition to reproductive rights advocates, others also oppose the constitutional amendment, warning that elections could be bought and justices could be beholden to donors. Former Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, for instance, pointed to the example of Elon Musk trying (unsuccessfully) to buy Wisconsin Supreme Court seats in 2025:

“They expect something from their investment. That compromises the integrity of the court.”

Abortion Allowed Her to Choose Motherhood

With the fourth anniversary of Dobbs on the horizon, we’re holding everyone’s abortion stories extra close to our hearts. Jayme Serbell’s personal essay in Vogue, “The Abortion That Made Me a Parent,” is a must-read:

“I’ve learned to live with the dueling realities of my life as a mother; one that carries joy and sorrow, fear and hope, pain and beauty. I’m not afraid to say the word abortion out loud, because to me it’s not some scary, terrible thing. An abortion saved my son’s life. It has carried me to a space of deeper gratitude for my son who lived.”

About 60% of abortion patients already have kids, and abortion access helps people create space to have children when they’re ready. Emergency, life-saving abortion helps parents live to care for the children they do have, or someday have children in the future. Parenthood and abortion aren’t at odds with each other, and we’re thankful for storytellers like Serbell who make this so clear.