An American pro-abortion group concedes that tens of thousands of unborn babies have been saved over the past year. That’s after the US Supreme Court gave responsibility for abortion law to the states in its historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision which overturned the highest US court’s Roe v Wade precedent which had stood for 49 years. In the past year many states have introduced a swathe of bans on abortions, while some have increased accessibility.
The #WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning collated data from across the nation. Researchers developed a database of all clinics, private medical offices, hospitals and telehealth providers in the country and asked them to share their monthly abortion counts. It found there were at least 25,640 fewer terminations in the eight months since the court’s historic ruling.
By the researchers’ own admission, their analysis was unable to assess the number of abortions performed outside of a formal setting, such as the use of chemical abortion pills which accounts for roughly half of all abortions. The Christian Post reports that’s why pro-life groups say the #WeCount’s estimate of the reduced number of abortions is excessively low. Pro-life research group the Charlotte Lozier Institute estimated there were 32,260 fewer abortions carried out from July 2022 to December 2022, a shorter timespan than for the #WeCount Project.
Catholic University of America’s Assistant Professor of Social Research Michael New wrote in the National Review it was heartening to see an abortion advocate acknowledge “that strong, pro-life laws are saving many lives.
“In the aftermath of Dobbs, pro-lifers still face numerous political and policy challenges. However, we were right to celebrate Roe‘s first anniversary last month,” he told The Christian Post, adding that: “Just one year after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, 15 states already have laws in effect protecting all preborn children. Additionally, four other states protect preborn children after a certain point in gestation. More importantly, a growing body of data show that these legislative efforts are literally saving thousands of lives.”
The academic urges people to wait for abortion data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and leading reproductive health researcher, The Guttmacher Institute, to “have a better sense of the incidence of abortion in the United States post-Dobbs.”
