By CatholicVote | Created at 2024-10-29 18:31:57 | Updated at 2024-10-30 21:36:41
1 day ago
A report released last week by a pro-abortion organization claims to have found that, up until June 2024, estimates of the numbers of abortions in the United States show they continue to increase and that, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the number of abortions in states with pro-life laws has not changed.
The Society of Family Planning, which claims to be “the source for abortion and contraception science,” says it operates with the “vision” that “just and equitable abortion and contraception is informed by science.”
The report of the Society’s #WeCount abortion estimate project asserts that, thus far for this year, the number of abortions has risen by about 12%, and that the number of abortions in pro-life states has not changed due to the number of drug-induced abortions and the fact that women from those states are traveling to other areas to terminate their pregnancies.
Results of the #WeCount report have been reported by abortion rights media allies such as the New York Times and the Detroit News.
The Society refers to ending the lives of unborn babies as “abortion care.” In April, it released this statement on its website regarding its total opposition to any limits on abortion:
The Society opposes the inclusion of gestational duration limits, including viability, in legislation, laws, initiatives, or regulations. The Society opposes criminalization of abortion care at any point in pregnancy, including patients and clinicians. The Society insists on centering the people most impacted by abortion bans and restrictions when crafting language and building power for abortion protective legislation and policy.
The main concern expressed by #WeCount representatives appears to be that abortions are no longer easy to obtain everywhere in the United States.
According to Alison Norris, MD, PhD, #WeCount co-chair and professor at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health, pro-life laws “strip away access,” as she said in a press statement, adding:
There is still an immense unmet need for abortion care across the country. Abortion bans have a lasting, harmful impact, especially on the people who are forced to travel long distances to access abortion care, to postpone their care, or to continue their pregnancy against their will.
In his review of #WeCount’s stated results, however, pro-life researcher Michael New, Ph.D., said “there is much less here than meets the eye.”
In his column Wednesday at National Review, New, an assistant professor at the Catholic University of America and an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, observed several areas of concern regarding the #WeCount data.
First, he noted that even if the data is accepted as is, the number of abortions is still showing slower growth in states with strong pro-life laws:
[W]hen the first six months of 2023 are compared to the first six months of 2020, abortions increased by nearly 4 percent in twelve states that enacted abortion bans. However, between 2020 and 2023, the overall number of abortions increased by over 13 percent nationwide. The fact there has been a much slower growth in the incidence of abortion in states with strong pro-life laws is evidence that these protective laws are having an impact.
Second, New observed the #WeCount researchers reported a 56% rise in abortions in West Virginia and a 37% increase in Tennessee between 2020 and 2023, an outcome he finds unlikely since both states enacted strong pro-life laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson.
Finally, according to #WeCount, 19% of abortions initiated via telehealth are drug-induced, a data point that hardly seems accurate to New. He explained:
[S]imply because abortion pills were ordered remotely does not mean an abortion took place. Some women may have changed their minds. Some women might have ordered abortion pills for future use. Slate even ran an article this week about how a record number of women who are not pregnant are ordering chemical-abortion pills just in case they need them in the future. This raises serious questions about the accuracy of #WeCount’s data.
New recommends researchers use birth data to study the impact of pro-life legislation in the states.
In his own study, published at the Charlotte Lozier Institute in November 2022, he found that, in Texas, the state’s Heartbeat Act, enacted September 2021, saved more than 1,000 babies each month. He wrote:
[B]irth data shows that between March 2022 and July 2022, the number of births in Texas increased by more than 5,000 as compared to identical time periods from previous years. This review of newly available state birth data provides a compelling indication that the Texas Heartbeat Act has already played a vital role in saving thousands of lives in the Lone Star state.
“In fact, Texas had the largest percentage of birth increase of any state in 2022, in large part because it was the first state to enforce a strong pro-life law,” New emphasized at National Review.
In another study, published in November 2023 at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Daniel Dench, et al, used birth counts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to compare birth patterns in states with pro-life laws after Dobbs with those of states having few restrictions on abortion.
The researchers found
that in the first six months of 2023, births rose by an average of 2.3 percent in states enforcing total abortion bans compared to a control group of states where abortion rights remained protected, amounting to approximately 32,000 additional annual births resulting from abortion bans.
The #WeCount report, New warned, “is the latest attempt by pro-abortion researchers and their allies in the mainstream media to argue that pro-life laws are an ineffective strategy for preventing abortions.”
