TRAP laws are likely what happened to the abortion rate in Texas, for example, Dr. Jones says. In 2013, the state legislature passed a law known as HB2. This is the law that made former state. Rep. Wendy Davis famous after her 11-hour filibuster. When it passed, more than half of the state’s 41 abortion clinics closed. (And although this law was struck down by the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016, many of the clinics remain shuttered. Once they close down, it’s extremely difficult to re-open, advocates say.) So it’s no surprise that the abortion rate in Texas declined by 28% between 2011 and 2014. Texas is not the only state where you can see this happening. Arizona also enacted four new TRAP laws between 2012 and 2014, and lost 6 of 15 abortion providers. In the end, the state saw a 22% decline in the abortion rate. Dr. Jones cautions that the researchers did not dig deeply into exactly how clinic regulations affected closings and abortion rates, but says that there is little doubt that the policy context is playing at least some role. “If there are fewer abortions because women want them but they can’t have them, that’s not unilaterally a good thing. It's important to look at the things that are contributing to that.”The abortion rate was already on the decline by the time Guttmacher conducted its 2014 survey. That's because of a nationwide decrease in the rate of unintended pregnancies. In fact, between 2008 and 2011, unintended pregnancies dropped by 18% , largely due to more women using better, longer-lasting birth control methods, such as the IUD and implant. While it’s hard to say exactly how much a decline in unintended pregnancies overall has contributed to the 2014 decline across the country, effective birth control was pretty much the only reason the numbers declined in 2011, and Dr. Jones suspects that trend is continuing. Consider the following: Between 2007 and 2009, use of highly effective long-acting birth control methods, such as the IUD and the implant, shot up by 130%. By 2012, IUDs accounted for 9.5% of all contraceptives in use, compared to less than 2% in 2001. According to one study , the Affordable Care Act also virtually erased co-pays for IUDs for insured women, which may have made them more attractive to more women. Also, between 2011 and 2014, there was a smaller increase (from 7% in 2011 to 11% in 2014) among low-income women choosing these long-acting methods. This bump is important because low-income women account for 75% of the people who have abortions. Even a small increase in better birth control for these women can have a big impact on the abortion numbers. The fact that many of these long-acting methods can offer three, five, even 10 years of birth control, could mean that these same women who got them placed as early as 2007 are still using them, and that's continuing to contribute to the drop in abortion, Dr. Jones says.