'A recipe for a lot of suffering': How abortion bans may strain the red states

The central paradox of the abortion debate is that the red states racing to outlaw or severely limit the procedure may be the places least prepared to deal with the practical consequences of the new restrictions. And that, experts project, could mean significantly more infant and maternal deaths and childhood poverty in states that, as a group, already rank at the bottom on those critical outcomes for kids and families.

New research shows that the states banning abortion could see up to hundreds of thousands of new births each year, most of them unplanned, and concentrated among lower-income families already facing the greatest financial and health care challenges. Social scientists have consistently found that those unplanned pregnancies tend to produce worse outcomes for kids and mothers -- and, with abortion prohibited or severely limited, they now will be rising precisely in states, including most of the South, that traditionally have invested the least in health, education and other social supports for families.

"It is as if somebody came down with a magic marker and circled the states least equipped to deal with an abortion ban and with the largest percentage of their population falling into the most elevated risk categories," says Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, who helped organize an amicus brief in the abortion case from over 500 social scientists.