Isaac Maddow-Zimet

Attacks on Shield Laws Are the Next Step in Criminalizing Abortion Care

Shield laws have become a lifeline for abortion patients and providers in the US post-Dobbs, which is precisely why conservative policymakers are turning to the courts, Congress, and state legislatures to attack this critical method of care. 🧵
www.guttmacher.org/2025/09/atta...

Proud to have signed on to this letter, along with many other colleagues in the field (including @guttmacher.org researchers @cbpolis.bsky.social , @megankavanaugh.bsky.social, Kathryn Kost, Rachel Jones, Ann Moore and Beth Sully)

Check out our new brief @ccfamilies.bsky.social on the limitations of population projections for understanding future fertility patterns. The growing public discourse on declining fertility needs demographers voices and expertise, while recognizing the limits of our methods.

Are we doomed to a demographic destiny of decline because ladies aren't having babies? No.

We've been here before. It turns out that population projections only describe one of many possible futures. Our actual future is still to be written.

Don’t Panic: Population Projection is Not a Crystal Ball August 20th, 2025 Population panic – worries about “depopulation” linked to low birth rates – has become pervasive, with dire predictions in both the short and long term. Yet demographers like us – experts who explicitly study population size, composition, and structure – are generally not highly concerned. Why is this? It’s because we understand the strengths and limitations of population projections. Projections can accurately describe how populations will change if we know future birth, death, and migration rates. But demographers are well aware that they don’t have a crystal ball – we can’t fully anticipate economic shifts, political changes, global events, or how future generations will respond to their changing worlds. That’s why the farther we project from the present, the less accurate those projections are likely to be.

Feeling alarmed over dire long-term population projections that suggest humanity will disappear? Don't be!

Demographers generally aren't worried, and you shouldn't be either. @amandajean.bsky.social explains why in this great @ccfamilies.bsky.social brief.

sites.utexas.edu/contemporary...

Of course!

(Also very impressed that they edited out all my "um"s)

Are abortion numbers rising in the US? Podcast Episode · More or Less: Behind the Stats · 08/06/2025 · 9m

Really enjoyed talking to Lizzy McNeill on the BBC More or Less podcast about trends in abortion provision post Dobbs (along with @ushma.bsky.social !) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Fears that falling birth rates in US could lead to population collapse are based on faulty assumptions While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated.

Want to know why demographers aren't panicking over low birth rates? @lesja.bsky.social, @shelleydclark.bsky.social, & I have a new piece in @theconversation.com explaining the faulty logic that underlies the low birth rate-induced population panic than fuels the pronatalism movement. 1/n

The need to make *open code* especially intelligible for it to be actually useful for understanding what people did reminds me of this older post from Dan Simpson on Gelman's blog - which I remember setting off a lot of discussion at the time!
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/13/w...

Comprehensibility of research. This is not transparency nor openness. What I mean is research has sufficient documentation and justification to reduce error and empower others to make up their own minds about its value. Research should be intelligible. Access is not sufficient. Research can be replicable without being reasonable or correct. Materials and data can be open without being intelligible, and they can be partly closed while still being comprehensible. The rise of AI reinforces the need for comprehensibility, because “I asked the chatbot” is not comprehensible. But for sure AI will be a part of scientific workflow now and into the future. But the researcher must be responsible, not the bot.

This is such a great thoughtful and nuanced post by @rmcelreath.bsky.social on open science/computational reproducibility - especially on the need to make research and code *intelligible*, not just transparent.
elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...

a woman says let 's get into it with a pinkvilla logo in the background ALT: a woman says let 's get into it with a pinkvilla logo in the background

Journalists often ask for my thoughts on the contemporary US pronatalist movement. My assessment is based on my expertise and training as a social demographer, and my own research on childbearing behaviors at the individual and aggregate levels.

Strap in, b/c I've got a lot to say. 1/

As mifepristone continues to be threatened (read: RFK Jr's baseless/insane claims about safety) more folks are considering the role of misoprostol-only medication abortion regimens in the US

Well happy Monday folks because I have *two* new studies out for you: (1/4)

Being a social scientist means holding two truths at once: 1. This is all deeply complicated 2. I have to submit something by Tuesday

New: SCOTUS *allows* states to defund Planned Parenthood, holding that Medicaid does not give patients a right to obtain care from its providers.

Back in April Terri-Ann and I wrote about the public health implications of this ruling - and trust us…they are major

thehill.com/opinion/5235...

Protestors holding signs advocating for abortion rights in front of the United States Capitol building at dusk. The text reads, “Three years ago, Toe v. Wade was overturned. More than 1 in 7 abortion patients travel to other states, a recent study found.” Photo by Annie Mulligan for The Washington Post.

A map of the United States showing the legal status of abortion by state. States are color-coded: red indicates a ban on all or most abortions, dark grey signifies a ban on abortions after 12 or 15 weeks, light grey indicates the ban is blocked by courts, and white means abortions are legal.

More than 150,000 people traveled out of state to get an abortion last year, nearly one-fifth of whom coming from Texas alone — and new numbers paint a picture of how far they went to receive care.

It’s been three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. wapo.st/3TCXhxF

Everyone deserves access to abortion care in their communities via their preferred method, whether that is an in clinic procedure, via telemedicine, or abortion pills sourced form a community network. Any restrictions that limit people's choices are unjust. Full stop.

Just looking at the map (article is paywalled, unfortunately): God bless Carbondale, and all of southern Illinois

And as #WeCount and others have documented - the increased availability of telehealth through shield law providers is likely playing a big role here as well: helping many people access abortion care who would have otherwise traveled very far distances or not been able to access care at all.

Monthly Abortion Provision Study

All of the data is available (along with monthly counts through March 2025) on our website! And I want to give a huge thanks to the providers who give us data, in addition to providing critical care - this work literally would not be possible without them. www.guttmacher.org/monthly-abor...

Much of this travel wouldn't be possible with abortion funds, practical support organizations and providers working in concert to support patients - moving mountains to get people to care - and providing that support has only gotten harder as the distances people need to travel increase.

Florida's ban had ripple effects across the Southeast because in 2023 it was one of the few places where people could access in-clinic care after six weeks. In 2023, more than 1,800 Louisianans had abortions in Florida; in 2024, fewer than 500 did (and most before the ban went in effect in May).

Bar chart showing number of people traveling to NC from FL increased from 210 to 1320, alongside map

And we saw similar increases in travel to North Carolina, despite the 12 week ban and 72-hour waiting period in effect in that state.

Bar chart showing number of people traveling to VA from FL increased from 130 to 1620, alongside map

More than ten times more people traveled from Florida to Virginia to access abortion care in 2024 as compared to 2023, for example - despite it being hundreds of miles away.

Map showing where Florida residents traveled in 2024; bar chart showing increase in travel out of state for abortion care from 3300 in 2023 to 8400 in 2024.

But we also captured big changes, particularly in the Southeast, where Florida's six week ban led to many more people traveling out of state for care.

Map showing that Texans traveled all across the country for abortion care- many to neighboring states, but also as far as New York, Illinois and Washington.

Some of what we found echoes what the landscape of travel looked like in 2023: In Texas for example, even though many Texans are accessing care through telehealth (as #WeCount recently documented), tens of thousands are also traveling across state lines for care, across huge distances.

Tens of thousands of women traveled for abortion care again last year as state policies continue to shift | CNN More than 1 in 7 people who had an abortion in the United States last year crossed state lines to do so, according to new estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization fo...

Three years post Dobbs, enormously high numbers of people are still crossing state lines to access abortion care: the Monthly Provision Study just released new data on where they are coming from and where they are going. www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/h...

Thank you for writing it!!

Can’t wait to talk to you about it after you read it!

I keep coming back to the radical empathy and care that is demonstrated in every page - truly cannot stop talking about it/recommending it.