The headline, no doubt, depressed Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeauxis but it is a boon to pro-lifers and cause for jubilation: “Overturning Roe Has Meant At Least 10,000 Fewer Legal Abortions.”
Yes, that’s correct. “A data set shared exclusively with FiveThirtyEight shows that in the two months after the Supreme Court decision, there were 10,570 fewer abortions as compared to pre-Dobbs estimates.” The story is based on a report done by #WeCount, a national research project, led by the Society of Family Planning, and was released on October 28.
While the story is one long lamentation over the impact that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision has had on the number of abortion, it does have much useful information for pro-lifers.
To illustrate the impact of state laws protecting women and children versus those that don’t, Koerth and Thomson-DeVeauxis write “In all states that saw declines in their abortion numbers — which include the 15 states in which abortion was banned or severely limited over the summer — the number of abortions fell by about 22,000. Some of those women appear to have traveled out of state, because in other states, the number of abortions rose by an aggregate of about 12,000. But nationwide, the movement of abortions from states with bans and restrictions to those with fewer restrictions on access wasn’t enough to make up the shortfall.”
“Shortfall”? That over 10,000 babies did not lose their lives is not a “shortfall” but a cause for celebration.
Their story reports, as NRL News Today previously did, “According to the Guttmacher Institute, at least 66 clinics closed between the Dobbs decision and the end of October.”
The story offers examples of how the number of abortions performed increased where abortion remains legal.
[S]ome abortion providers have been able to increase capacity. Staffing wasn’t an issue for Whole Woman’s Health in Minnesota or Trust Women in Kansas — by the summer, they were flying in doctors from across the country to fill in their schedules, with more people reaching out to see if they could volunteer.
They note that these numbers are for legal abortions only “which means it’s almost certainly underestimating the total number,” Koerth and Thomson-DeVeauxis write. “Even before Dobbs, activist groups and online pharmacies were providing abortion pills directly to consumers through the mail. By July, Mexican activists were already reporting that they were inundated with requests for abortion pills from women all over the U.S.”
This is followed by the “sad news” that
But it’s also likely that some people who might have gotten an abortion in the pre-Dobbs era are simply carrying their pregnancies to term.
Clearly, protective laws are saving unborn lives. These laws will be challenged in court by pro-abortionists, of course, which is why aggressive state attorneys general are so important.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
