On Tuesday, the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount project released new abortion data. Currently, it has monthly abortion estimates up to June 2023. Past #WeCount estimates have shown post-Dobbs abortion declines. However, this new data purportedly shows that abortions have slightly increased in the year since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. This new data showing an abortion increase has been eagerly covered by a number of mainstream-media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, the Hill, Axios, and the Guardian.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media’s spin is that the pro-life laws that have been enacted since the Dobbs decision have been ineffective at lowering abortion rates. However, there is less here than meets the eye. First, there is a key methodological shortcoming with the #WeCount estimates. The #WeCount project compares a year of post-Dobbs abortion data to only two months of pre-Dobbs abortion data.
This is problematic for two reasons. First, two months is a relatively small sample size of pre-Dobbs data. Abortion totals in April and May of 2022 may not be reflective of abortion totals in other months prior to the Dobbs decision. Second, Texas and Oklahoma were already enforcing strong pro-life laws before Dobbs. That makes the abortion declines in these states after Dobbs appear less dramatic.
It should be noted that data from the CDC and Guttmacher both indicate that abortion rates started to increase in 2017. There are a variety of reasons for this, one of which is that FDA policies involving the distribution of chemical-abortion drugs became more permissive. During the Covid-19 pandemic it was possible for women to obtain chemical-abortion drugs without an in-person medical exam. The Biden administration FDA continued this policy after the pandemic.
Additionally, a number of states have made their abortion policies more permissive. In recent years, Rhode Island, Maine, and Illinois have all started to cover abortion through their state Medicaid programs. Illinois recently repealed its pro-life parental-involvement law, and Massachusetts weakened its own. Indeed, increasing abortion numbers in certain states have been due to these state and federal policy changes — yet this has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media.
In reality, good data show that recently enacted pro-life laws have saved lives. My Charlotte Lozier Institute analysis of Texas birth data and another analysis of Texas birth data that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association both show that the Texas Heartbeat Act has saved over a thousand lives every month. Additionally, data from the CDC indicates that, in 2022, Texas births increased by 4.2 percent — the largest increase in the country. This is partly because Texas was able to enforce a Heartbeat Act staring on September 1, 2021.
Downplaying the impact of pro-life laws has always been a long-term strategy of supporters of legal abortion and their allies in the mainstream media. Birth data from Texas, however, provide very powerful evidence that the Texas Heartbeat Act has saved thousands of lives. Forthcoming birth data from other states that enforced pro-life laws shortly after Dobbs will also likely show that strong pro-life laws save lives. As always, pro-lifers would do well to stay the course.