: [POST-BROADCAST CLARIFICATION April 30, 2026: The new Wyoming law says that an abortion cannot be performed if a “fetal heartbeat” has been detected. However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is "clinically inaccurate" to describe what can be heard via an ultrasound during very early pregnancy as a heartbeat. Cardiac cells in an embryo may exhibit electrical activity that is detectable, but there are no cardiac valves that could generate the sound that people know as a heartbeat. The Wyoming law prohibits abortions after that cardiac activity can be detected, which is generally around the sixth week of pregnancy.]
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
As birth rates fall in the U.S., prominent conservatives are encouraging Americans to have more children. They say that's crucial to maintaining the nation's workforce and to ensure there will be enough caregivers for an aging population. Those arguments are being cited now to pass new state level restrictions on abortion. Wyoming Public Media's Hanna Merzbach reports.
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JD VANCE: Our society has failed to recognize the obligation that one generation has to another.
HANNA MERZBACH: At the anti-abortion March for Life rally in D.C. last year, Vice President JD Vance had a clear message.
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VANCE: So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.
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MERZBACH: He encouraged states to continue to restrict abortions. Wyoming is the latest state to do so, passing a law to outlaw abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected at around six weeks.
EVIE BRENNAN: We're sending a message that children are important and that they are the future.
MERZBACH: Republican state lawmaker and former nurse Evie Brennan.
BRENNAN: Without an up-and-coming population that grows up here, that wants to stay here, then we just become a stagnant or a aging/dying state.
MERZBACH: John Hopkins demographer Suzanne Bell says Wyoming's tactic is unlikely to substantially grow its population.
SUZANNE BELL: Imposing a ban on abortion is not going to transform the trajectory of a state's fertility patterns.
MERZBACH: Bell says abortion bans can lead to a short-term population bump. Wyoming's neighbor Idaho saw one after it instituted one of America's strictest abortion bans in 2023.
BELL: What that works out to in absolute terms is about 240 excess births.
MERZBACH: But at the same time, researchers found Idaho was hemorrhaging health care workers. It now has 35% fewer OBGYNs than before the law went into effect. Population loss has been an issue in Wyoming for decades.
CLAIRE LANE: Any questions, I would love to chat.
MERZBACH: Claire Lane is giving a tour to prospective students at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. She told me there's not a lot of industry here.
LANE: Yeah. I feel like a lot of students don't see a ton of opportunities maybe necessarily in their fields to work here in Wyoming.
MERZBACH: Lane is a college senior with purple-tipped hair. She plans to stick around for grad school and speech language pathology, but says she'll probably leave the state to find work.
LANE: We do have a super small population, so a lot of students know that they might need to go somewhere else to find a job.
MERZBACH: A 2024 Harvard study said by the time Wyomingites reach their 30s, nearly two-thirds have left - one of the highest in the country. State lawmaker Evie Brennan, who helped pass the partial abortion ban, says she knows it's not the complete answer to growing Wyoming's population. She says the pro-life movement also needs to start focusing on more long-term solutions.
BRENNAN: We have to send the message that not only are you important in utero, but you're also important on Day 1, when you're born, like, outside of utero. And I don't know that the legislator has had, like, good, robust conversations on what that looks like.
MERZBACH: She hopes the legislature will evaluate the effects of the six-week abortion ban, but that depends on whether courts let it stand. Pro-abortion rights groups challenged it soon after it passed.
For NPR News, I'm Hanna Merzbach in Jackson, Wyoming.
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