According to a University of Houston report, the increase reverses a 15-year trend. And unwanted pregnancies will rise, researchers predict.

A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on abortion, according to new report from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.

  • @UnderpantsWeevil
    4•10 months ago

    I’m a native Texan and I’ve got to disabuse you of this notion. There’s definitely an effort to monetize the state’s bigoted legislature. But the end goal of these policies isn’t a large black prison force any more than the work camps in Dachau were about having a large Gypsy/Jewish/Communist labor force.

    The goal is to work these prisoners to death until there’s nobody left to arrest.

    We continue to have a rich legacy of forced sterilization nationally, particularly in state prisons.

    • @NotMyOldRedditName
      0•10 months ago

      But the prisons are for profit. There must be a steady stream of prisoners (that will be used as slave labor) or the prisons go out of business, and the prisons will do everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen.

      • @UnderpantsWeevil
        1•10 months ago

        But the prisons are for profit.

        Everything is for profit. The state is kickbacks stacked on top of kickbacks. They spend $3.5 billion/yr on ramshackle buildings with no AC and prohibition systems that barely function. They can’t keep anyone on staff because even the guards are treated like chattel.

        There must be a steady stream of prisoners (that will be used as slave labor) or the prisons go out of business

        Prison populations have been falling since COVID but spending (and profits) have only increased.

        If every prisoner in Texas vanished tomorrow, I guarantee the private contractors and facilities would still post record profits by year end.