Will banning abortions result in more unsafe abortions

1. Legal bans do not reliably reduce abortion incidence, but they change where and how abortions happen

Multiple syntheses and U.S. analyses show that restrictive laws often fail to eliminate abortions; instead they push people to travel, seek medication by nontraditional routes, or attempt to self-manage, altering the safety profile of care ^{[4] [6] [7]}. Global data collected by the WHO and summarized by researchers show that roughly 45% of all abortions worldwide are unsafe, with the vast majority of those occurring in settings with limited legal access—evidence that criminalization correlates with unsafe practice rather than absence of demand ^{[8] [1]}.

2. Empirical studies in the U.S. link bans to more births, worse infant outcomes, and likely greater maternal harms

State-level time-series and population studies since 2022 estimate tens of thousands of additional live births and hundreds of excess infant deaths attributable to bans in a subset of states, indicating that many people were unable to access care and were forced to continue pregnancies ^{[2] [5]}. Broader reviews estimate thousands of additional births and dozens of excess pregnancy-associated maternal deaths across states with bans, reinforcing that restricting legal care carries measurable health consequences ^{[9] [10]}.

3. Increased pregnancy-related risks under bans logically and empirically raise unsafe-abortion harms

Pregnancy itself carries greater health risk than abortion; analyses predict substantial increases in pregnancy-related mortality if abortion access is eliminated, and public‑health commentary warns that “back alley” or clandestine abortions become the last resort where legal care is blocked, increasing deaths and severe complications ^{[3] [1]}. Studies of past U.S. regulatory shocks show some people attempting to terminate pregnancies outside clinics—instances that, when replicated at scale, historically increase unsafe-abortion morbidity and mortality ^{[7] [1]}.

4. The impact is highly unequal—structural disadvantage magnifies unsafe outcomes

Johns Hopkins and related analyses find the largest fertility and infant-mortality changes in populations facing the greatest structural barriers—Black, low-income, and rural communities—signaling that bans worsen existing disparities and expose marginalized groups disproportionately to the risks of unsafe care ^{[5] [2] [11]}. Research also documents workforce and access erosion (fewer OB/GYN trainees in hostile states), which compounds care shortages and raises the likelihood that people will seek less-safe options ^[10].

5. Counterpoints, caveats, and limits of the evidence

Some analyses note that abortion counts in permissive states rose as people traveled for care, complicating national-level interpretation and showing legal geography matters ^{[6] [12]}. Other work highlights that declines in clinic-provided abortions after regulation can reflect both access barriers and shifts toward self-managed medication abortion or increased contraception—factors that muddle attribution ^[7]. Importantly, data collection is incomplete and often lags; clandestine and self-managed procedures are undercounted, so the true scale of unsafe abortion after bans is partially hidden by surveillance gaps ^{[1] [6]}.

6. Bottom line: bans increase the risk of more unsafe abortions, especially for the vulnerable

Across global and U.S. evidence, restrictive laws do not eradicate abortion demand; they re-route it into less regulated, often riskier pathways and produce measurable increases in births, infant deaths, and pregnancy-related mortality that signal heightened harm—conditions historically tied to rises in unsafe abortion ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The precise magnitude in every jurisdiction remains uncertain because of surveillance limits and changing care models (telemedicine, cross‑state travel), but the direction of harm is consistent across the cited literature ^{[4] [8]}.