The details, via CNA:
More than 10,000 unborn babies are alive today because of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a new report by a pro-abortion group suggests.
Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount initiative reported Friday that there were 5,270 fewer abortions in July and 5,400 fewer in August after the court’s June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe and freed individual states to decide abortion policy.
According to #WeCount, abortions declined almost to zero in states with bans, but they increased in many states where abortion remained legal. In August, fewer than 10 abortions were performed in each of the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. #WeCount also identified some of the states with the largest increases in abortion as North Carolina (37%), Kansas (36%), Colorado (33%), and Illinois (28%).
In the two months after Dobbs, the number of women getting abortions decreased by 10,670, or 6%, the group reported. If those numbers were to continue, FiveThirtyEight pointed out, more than 60,000 lives could be saved from abortion in one year alone.
Pro-life research organizations applauded the finding.
“The results from the #WeCount project confirm that pro-life laws save lives,” Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America, told CNA. “There is nothing like the birth of a new baby, and these laws will translate into that miracle thousands of times over.”
He stressed that certain states are supporting life-affirming alternatives to abortion.
“The abortion industry has only one message for women: you can’t do it. We’re now replacing that with something better: you can do it, and we will be there to support you,” he continued. “Already pro-life states have stepped up to support women and families — Texas alone has budgeted over $100 million to give women real options.”
More, from FiveThirtyEight:
Since June, thousands of Americans have crossed state lines seeking abortion, like a pressure wave spreading out from a blast zone. 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. That figure is a net, counting both declines in some states and increases in others, and it shows how a few states are absorbing some — but not all — of the demand for abortions in states where it’s now banned.
The results suggest that in July and August, there were more than 10,000 people who “felt they had no options,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a professor and public health social scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. Along with Dr. Alison Norris, a professor of epidemiology at the Ohio State University, she co-chairs #WeCount, a national research project led by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that supports research on abortion and contraception. “They couldn’t travel, and they had to figure out what else to do,” Upadhyay said.
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. Between April and August, the number of abortions declined by 6 percent, and it’s likely that the decline in abortions represents thousands of women who sought abortions illegally or didn’t get one at all. If these trends persist, there could be at least 60,000 fewer abortions in the next year as a result of the Dobbs decision.
