Earlier this month, the #WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning released its updated data on the number of abortions that have occurred since the June 2022 Dobbs decision. The #WeCount project obtains monthly abortion data from abortion facilities. It compares abortion declines in states that have passed protective pro-life laws with abortion increases elsewhere. It found that between July 2022 and March 2023, the number of abortions performed in the United States fell by approximately 24,000.
Overall, pro-lifers were pleased. It was heartening to see a group supporting legal abortion acknowledge that strong pro-life laws are savings tens of thousands of lives. That said, the new #WeCount data raise some serious concerns. The previous #WeCount estimates, released in April 2023, showed that pro-life laws had resulted in approximately 32,000 fewer abortions during a shorter time period.
Why did the #WeCount project lower its estimate of the number of lives saved? First, in its revised estimate, it finds that fewer abortions were performed in the months before the Dobbs decision. That makes the post-Dobbs abortion declines seem less dramatic. More importantly, the #WeCount data indicate that a very high number of abortions took place in March 2023. Specifically, it finds that 90,810 abortions took place in March 2023 — this is approximately 9,000 more abortions than took place in either April 2022 or May 2002, months that predated Dobbs.
Overall, these March 2023 abortion estimates from #WeCount make little sense. There is no plausible reason why we would see a large abortion increase during a month when at least 13 states had laws in place protecting all preborn children and when several other states were enforcing laws protecting preborn children after a certain gestational age. Though the #WeCount project is laudable, pro-lifers may have to wait for abortion data from the CDC and Guttmacher to have a better sense of the incidence of abortion in the United States post-Dobbs.
That said, birth data from Texas provide very powerful evidence that protective pro-life laws are saving lives. The Texas Heartbeat Act, which protects preborn children after about six weeks’ gestation, took effect on September 1, 2021. In my Charlotte Lozier Institute analysis, from November 2022, of Texas birth data, I found that the Heartbeat Act was preventing approximately 1,000 abortions from taking place in Texas every month. Also, new data from the CDC show that in 2022 the Texas birthrate increased by 4.7 percent — the largest percentage increase in the country.
Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. In the aftermath of Dobbs, pro-lifers still face numerous political and policy challenges. However, we were right to spend some time in celebration this past weekend. Just one year after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, 14 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.